David Brooks

The Radical Rich: Moving From Romney to Re-Occupy

Richard Eskow — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:00:19 -0400

Two recent movements have transformed the political landscape. The Occupy movement literally operates in the light of day. The other movement operates in secrecy, with money as its "speech" rather than ... well, you know, speech.

The Romney video offers us a rare glimpse of the other movement. This movement of the extremely rich is ruthless, radical, and full of rage. And it's on the rise.

If you're not scared, you're not paying attention.

The Revolutionary

Sure, it was stupid for Mitt Romney to insult the non-Federal-tax paying "47 percent" on that video, especially since so many of them are Republican voters. But it was only "stupid" in traditional political terms. For a radical – and make no mistake, Romney is a radical – those rules don't apply.

The bile flows out of this unscripted Romney. He says of his father, the governor, presidential candidate and car company CEO: "Had he been born of Mexican parents, I'd have a better shot of winning this." This kind of resentment, as absurd as it is, is a very real emotion for the Radical Rich.

The words seem to sting his lips when he says "they believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, that they are entitled – to health care, to food, to housing, you name it. That's an entitlement."

Feast your eyes on the articulated rage of the Radical Rich. Romney and his audience are genuinely angry at people who "don't pay taxes" – although almost all of the "47 percent" do, counting payroll and sales taxes. That doesn't matter. The Radical Rich consider all of them – the disabled, the elderly, poor people, veterans – the Other.

From Savanarola to Sarah Palin, from Robespierre to Romney, the psychology never changes: You're either one of us or one of them.

Private Equity Party People

In his attempt to defend Romney, David Brooks suggested he was a "fundamentally decent" person who only expresses contempt for so many of this country's citizens because it appeals to his audience.

The only thing that may be less "decent" than hating entire groups of people is pretending to hate them for your own purposes. But this incident reveals something even more important than Romney's weakness of character, which is:

That's what appeals to Romney' audience.

The guests had gathered at the home of Mark Leder, a private equity manager whose business practices are as exploitative and job-killing as Bain Capital's. Leder's post-divorce antics earned him the nickname "private equity party boy" and headlines like "Nude frolic in tycoon's pool."

Romney and the others keep their clothes on, in case you were wondering, so the video's work-safe.

But that doesn't mean they're not enjoying life. They've acquired a level of wealth, power and luxury which ancient pharaohs and kings could never imagine: Their private jets will take them anywhere on the planet at a few minutes' notice. Rulers of nations flatter and court them. They even seem to be above the law. None of them will ever know hunger, or financial fear, or be denied medical care because they can't pay for it.

And yet they're filled with resentment.

Their voices are heard over the the constant clinking of silver forks on fine china. As the night wore on a man at that table undoubtedly loosened his expensive belt – lizard-skin, perhaps, or calfskin – because he'd eaten too much. A slightly tipsy woman left lipstick prints – a Shiseido lacquered rouge perhaps, in a shade like "Savage," "Nymph," or "Nocturne" (Mark would like that) – on a half-empty glass of very fine wine.

And yet, beneath the warmth of the meal and the glow of the wine, they were burning with rage.

Meet The Radicals

They're probably just a small subset of high-earning Americans. But these resentment-fueled party people are a new force in politics, made even more powerful by growing wealth inequity and Citizens United. They are the Radical Rich.

How radical are they?

Romney and his party are already pursuing their radical policies: A dismantling of most government programs, including a self-funded program like Social Security and vitally needed ones like Medicaid, Federal disaster relief, education ... even law enforcement and storm warning systems to reduce deaths and property damage.

The country they seek is radically different from the one we all grew up in, or even the troubled one we live in today. It's a nation without a social safety net, with hungry and ill people in the streets, without free and fair elections, without basic legal protections for consumers or the environment – a United States unlike anything we've seen in our lifetime.

How angry are they?

Their resentment is as great as their wealth. It seemed like an unfortunate slip from an unpleasant individual when another hedge funder, Steve Schwarzman, compared the loss of his tax breaks to Hitler's invasion of Poland. But we now know that this sense of outrage is shared by many, if not most, of his peers: Hedge funder Daniel S. Loeb. The unnamed CEOs of Fareed Zakaria's acquaintance. Scandal-ridden bank CEO Jamie Dimon.

You'd think they'd be kissing the ground Barack Obama walks on, given their embarrassment – or what should be an "embarrassment" – of riches.

But they're enraged. Why?

Insatiable

Because it isn't enough.

At no time in modern history has the top 1 percent – or the top 0.1 percent, or the top 0.01 percent – owned more of our wealth or paid less in taxes.

But it isn't enough.

The Wall Street executives who broke laws weren't indicted, and those who ruined their own businesses were saved – their wealth and incomes protected – by the very people who are being financially destroyed by their actions.

It isn't enough.

Our government relaxed the regulations, razed the rules, and leveled the laws so they could ruin both the economy and the Gulf of Mexico, and has left us vulnerable to their ongoing predations.

It isn't enough.

What do they want?

They want more – more tax breaks, more protection from the law.

And they want adoration. From the looks of it, nothing short of an Roman Imperial cult – complete with their apotheosis as state deities upon their death – would satisfy them. Obama's corporate-friendly policies, which have protected their wealth and protected them from judgement, aren't enough. They want him to pledge his fealty on the White House steps – or they'll destroy him.

Not every wealthy person is radical, of course. It seems as if a rich person's level of bitterness and rage is directly proportional to the undeservedness of their riches: Hedge fund managers who exploited the rules are the angriest, while authentically talented business people, artists or genuinely "job-creating" entrepreneurs seem to be the least angry.

Could it be guilt, and a not entirely unreasonable feeling of low self-worth, turned outward? Whatever's behind it, a Molotov cocktail of wealthy rage has exploded.

Asymmetrical Warfare

David Frum, a conservative and former George W. Bush speechwriter, gets it. Frum writes that "what makes it all both so heart-rending and so outrageous is that all this is occurring at a time when economically disadvantaged Americans have never been so demoralized and passive, never exerted less political clout. No Coxey's army is marching on Washington, no sit-down strikes are paralyzing factories, no squatters are moving onto farmer's fields."

Beautifully said. Frum's batting average dips slightly as he continues: "Occupy Wall Street immediately fizzled, there is no protest party of the political left."

Occupy didn't "fizzle." It attracted massive support almost overnight. Within weeks it had dramatically transformed the national conversation. Democrats from the president on down were forced to address issues of economic injustice, at least rhetorically, instead of negotiating destructive (and pro-wealthy) austerity deals with the Republican counterparts.

But the powers arrayed against Occupy – in the media, in politics, and elsewhere – combined with the winter winds to force it into hibernation.

Frum's absolutely right, however, when he says there's "no protest party of the political left" – although I'd drop the word "protest" and make it simply a party, one that can win rather than just siphon off votes. That won't happen without a mass movement.

That's why it's time to re-Occupy our country. In fact, maybe it should've been called "Re-Occupy" all along. It was, and it remains, a re-occupation – of our privatized public spaces and our privatized political discourse. Occupy, or something like it, is the only force that has a chance against the power of the Radical Rich.

Closing the Deal

Mitt can't close the deal. He's tanking like Facebook's IPO. Why? Because he's one of the Radical Rich, and he can't control his rage any more than Steve Scharzman can.

The executives I used to know would have laughed off Obama's populist rhetoric as long as the cash kept pouring in. But the new crowd doesn't just want an unfair and ill-gotten share of the nation's wealth. They want it paid as tribute.

This didn't happen by accident. The Radical Rich have, in David Frum's words, been "scammed" by political operators playing off their emotions. In the old days demagogues would work a mob into a frenzy until it was ready to burn down Parliament. Nowadays you can work a billionaire or two into a frenzy and buy Parliament instead. That's much more efficient – and a lot less messy.

And yet, even with all their resources at his disposal, Mitt can't close the deal. He can't hide his radicalism long enough.

Next time it'll be uglier. They may not even try to close the deal. They might just take it. That's why we need a new movement.

What would a revived Occupy movement – a "Re-Occupy movement" – look like? That topic should dominate the conversation on the American left. This election and the events that follow it should be viewed through the lens of long-term independent activism, with political office only one tool among many.

Romney articulated both his own emotions and those of his crowd when he said of the American majority, "The things that animate us aren't the things that animate them." Well, right back at ya, pal.

That's why it's time to Re-Occupy the country – now, before it's too late.

David Brooks Thinks Romney's a "Modern Capitalist." He's Right.

Richard Eskow — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 15:22:29 -0400

David Brooks says Obama's attacks on Romney's business record are "about capitalism." That's like saying an arrest for vehicular homicide is "about driving."

Our economic "roads" are jammed with destructive drivers like Romney. They're menacing motorists with their massive semis and monster dumptrucks while traffic laws go unenforced. And whenever there's a lethal pileup their friends say it proves we shouldn't have traffic laws at all.

Brooks says that the President's campaign rhetoric "challenges the entire logic of capitalism as it has existed over several decades." That sounds like a subliminal suggestion from the liberals' favorite conservative that Barack Obama's a socialist. But if there's anything that needs to be challenged at this point in history it's "the entire logic of capitalism as it has existed over several decades."

This decades-long wave of unchecked corporate greed was brought about by deregulation, along with other symptoms of a corrupting collusion between corporate and political leaders. That unholy marriage has been made manifest in the very being of Mitt Romney.

Brooks conflates the economic rampage this process has created with capitalism itself - or, in a phrase he uses no less than three times in an 800-word piece, "modern capitalism." Those two words embrace behaviors that include both Wall Street lawlessness and the government largesse that has inflated the wealth of people like Mitt Romney, whose firm's first success was made possible by Massachusetts tax deals and whose personal fortune has been padded by undeserved loopholes.

Today's big-corporate czars are the worst case studies in unchecked greed since the Robber Barons. You'll need a phrase like "Modern Capitalism" if you're trying to defend their misdeeds. The words resonate with entrepreneurial spirit, which the American public loves. And who could be against the "modern" except a Luddite or a fool?

(Or a socialist, of course.)

Today's big-money CEOs aren't really "capitalist." The popular American notion of "capitalism" fits Merriam-Webster's definition: "An economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market."

But that's not how it works anymore. Wall Street has deceived and defrauded courts, homeowners, account holders, shareholders, government agencies and investors on an epic scale. Market choices - which bank to use, whether to invest in big-bank shares or purchase mortgage-backed securities, aren't "determined by private decision" at all. They're driven by long-standing patterns of fraud and deception.

Our largest corporations survive and thrive because of government patronage, not market forces. That's especially true of the too-big-to-fail banks which the government rescued after the crisis, and which it continues to prop up with cheap Federal Reserve money, lax regulation of civil and criminal laws, and the moral hazard that comes with the implicit guarantee of future bailouts.

The LIBOR scandal reminds us that prices are often determined, not by "competition in the free market," but by price-fixing, investor fraud, and market manipulation by a very small group of "too big to fail" players.

David Brooks' conception of "modern capitalism" should repel most Americans, and according to polling data it does. Conservatives should be as outraged as anyone - maybe more so, since it flies in the face of everything they claim to hold dear: transparency, integrity, freedom from government control, and an economy guided by "the wisdom of the markets."

In other words, what David Brooks calls "modern capitalism" isn't capitalism at all.

It's not modern, either. The government/big business cronyism Brooks defends is as ancient as the Roman and Athenian politicians who gave bribes for personal profit. It's as old as the Union Pacific/Crédit Mobilier scandal of 1872. It's as stale as J. Pierpont Morgan responding to charges of illegal restraint of trade by asking Teddy Roosevelt, "Why don't you just send your man to my man and we'll fix it up?" It's as antiquated as bank magnate Andrew Mellon, who as Hoover's Treasury Secretary articulated the credo which corporate predators re-state whenever they've caused economic disaster:

"Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate ..."

Brooks hits closer to home when he points out that, contrary to campaign rhetoric, Obama has employed or been friendly with some dubious "Modern Capitalists." He's right to say the President hasn't acted against globalization. He even missed the chance to knock Obama for supporting additional free trade agreements. The President should do a better job of matching his actions to his rhetoric.

Then there's Mitt. Seems like everybody's got some advice for him nowadays: Release your taxes. Don't release your taxes. Focus on Obama. Focus on the future. Don't focus at all. There's only one piece of advice Romney hasn't been given: Be yourself.

Think about that.

But out of all the unsolicited suggestions coming Mitt's way, none can be worse that the one offered by David Brooks. "Romney is going to have to define a vision of modern capitalism," Brooks writes. Define a vision of modern capitalism?

That's Romney's biggest problem: He already has.

John Carney Doesn't Believe Government Spending Can Achieve Public Purpose

Joseph M. Firestone — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 01:38:40 -0500

John Carney commented on a post by David Brooks and a follow-up by Randy Wray. Brooks says that a tax credit is essentially the same as Government spending and used an example from David Bradford, a Princeton economist, of the Pentagon wanting to acquire a new plane and paying for it with a tax credit.

Randy comments on the idea this way:

"What is a sovereign currency? It is (mostly) a keystroke that results in an electronic entry on a bank’s balance sheet. (Yes it can also be shiny coins, paper notes, and watermarked checks—but those are increasingly less important.) To be more accurate, it is two entries: an entry in the deposit account of the fighter plane’s producer and a reserve credit at the central bank for the producer’s bank.

"In the case of a modern “fiat” sovereign currency, what does the government promise? To “redeem” its currency in tax payment. When the fighter plane producer pays taxes, the keystrokes are reversed: the deposit is debited and the bank’s reserves at the Fed are debited. Presto-change-O the sovereign currency disappears in redemption.

"The fighter plane ends up at the government. That, of course, was the whole purpose of the keystrokes.

"Now let’s take Bradford’s example. Instead of keystroking a deposit, the government issues a “tax credit” to be used later in redemption of its tax liability. When tax time comes, the tax credit is sent on to the Treasury (presumably, it will be an electronic entry so little electrons pulse their way to Washington). Presto-change-O the tax credit is gone.

"Yep, Brooks has that part right. It is exactly the same thing. The fighter plane is moved to the government.

"After all, that’s what it is all about, right? From inception, the purpose of the monetary system is to move resources to the public sphere.

"And then the private sector gets all sorts of bright ideas about other uses for the monetary system, such as making subprime mortgage loans to those with no income, no jobs, no assets, packaging the trash into still trashier MBSs that get tranched and re-packaged into CDOs, which are further tranched to produce CDOs squared and cubed. And off we are to a GFC that the Fed then tries to resolve through keystroking $29 trillion of bail-out funds to save the banksters.

"But that’s a story for another time. Let’s congratulate David Brooks for (finally!) getting one thing right."

Jon Carney comments:

”What Brooks gets and Wray misses, however, is that government spending priorities are economically damaging. When resources are moved "to the public sphere" they are utilized to realize political ends rather than "public" ends. That is, they are used to satisfy the demands of special interests who influence lawmakers and regulators.

"Like overgrown weeds, the tangle of tax breaks distorts behavior, clogs the economy and deprives the government of revenue," Brooks explains.

"Forget about the revenue part. Otherwise, this is exactly right.

"It's a shame that a guy as brilliant as Wray doesn't quite understand that the "public sphere" is nearly always code for private interests expressed through political power.”

Now, that's not economics at all. It's a statement about politics and Government, and I have to wonder what John Carney's special expertise is in these areas, or what reason we have to believe any bald assertions he makes about them that aren't accompanied by good theory, good data, and tight arguments.

His statement above is also about as bald a statement of anti-government, and anti-progressive ideology as one can imagine, and also reflects a cynical political theory about politics and government which is a) demonstrably false as a generalization, and b) where positive instances consistent with the theory do occur, it is often in political systems where that false theory is itself broadly popular among citizens who are disillusioned with democracy, and who create their own self-fulfilling prophecy that it must and will be subverted by special interests.

Places like Germany, Italy, and Austria in the 1920s and France and Eastern Europe in the whole inter-war period. And places like the United States is becoming now, where no one believes in the legitimacy or possibilities of government anymore, nor in anything else except their own private advancement, and a neo-spencerian struggle for survival.

Do we really need to ask why we ought to believe that “. . . government spending priorities are economically damaging”? Can Carney show us empirical evidence that the actual, non-monetary, costs of government spending exceed the non-monetary benefits of that spending so that we can observe the economic damage he assumes? Or is he just blowing smoke?

Just as important, can he show us empirical evidence that the actual, non-monetary benefits of private sector spending exceed the non-monetary costs of that spending, so that we can observe the economic progress, healing, and prosperity that I suspect he wants us to believe would be the impact of a heavier emphasis on private rather than government spending?

Somehow I doubt that John can do either of those things. And I think that what he's doing in this column is just giving us his variant of neo-Hayekian/Austrian/libertarian theology in place of a real economic argument that Government spending can't or won't work for achieving public purpose, assuming a political sphere that wants to make it work.

I also think that the issue he raises comes down to whether we can point to times and places where political interests expressed through politics and government were largely in accord with the public purpose, and whether that can happen again if people can once again make their government representative and responsive. We can point to such times and places. They don't come often. The progressive period. The New Deal. The Second World War, and the post-War period up to about 1966.

After a long 15 year period of transition to neo-liberalism, the present period of corrupt Government subverted by special interests began in 1980 and is still continuing. What John Carney and David Brooks both miss, but what Randy Wray gets, is that the success of public purpose economics, including MMT, is going to depend on changes that free the political system from the burden of the financial and other special interests that now control it. But just, maybe the American people, and people in Europe too, are close to having had it with neoliberalism, and change may be coming.

It's going to require ending accounting control frauds and kleptocracy by prosecuting and convicting the kleptocrats who have destroyed so much middle class wealth and looted and continue to loot the public treasury. If we can do that, then Government spending can again serve the public purpose. If not, if Brooks and Carney are right about Government spending, then we will either continue with lemon socialism or move even further along the true road to serfdom. We will, in other words, lose the very soul and character of America for good.

(Cross-posted from Correntewire.com

Negotiating Against America: Why Obama Shouldn't Listen to David Brooks

Richard Eskow — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 18:08:34 -0500

Uh-oh. David Brooks is offering the President advice again. Since we're told that Brooks is one of President Obama's favorite columnists, there's always the chance that his latest idea will gain traction in the White House. Brooks is smart, and he's a good salesman, so his ideas may resonate with a lot of other powerful Democrats, too.

That would be a very, very bad thing indeed. He's using new catchphrases to dress up some very bad, very old, and very unpopular ideas.

Two old paradigms ain't worth forty cents.

The Brooks proposal may sound fresh, but it's really only a mash-up of two stale notions: That "bipartisanship" happens whenever well-heeled Democratic and Republican politicians cut a deal, and that "transformation" is always exciting and positive - no matter what you're transforming from or to.

Brooks is still thinking in clichéd, outmoded "left" vs. "right" terms. Like so many others in Washington, he doesn't realize that the world has changed. The Grand Compromise he's offering isn't between "liberals" and "conservatives," but between most Americans - Republicans and independents as well as Democrats, Tea Partiers as well as progressives - and the tiny band of Washington insiders that have hijacked that city's thinking with ideas they continue to peddle as "bipartisan."

He has Washington intellectual fashion on his side, and that's no accident: This new style was developed by well-funded intellectual couturiers and then sold wholesale to receptive journalists, with Brooks among their most reliable retailers. This fashion will be wildly unpopular with the electorate, and we have the numbers to prove it.

Something Ripe

The "moment is ripe for fundamental change," says Brooks. "The popular longing for change is at its strongest." He's a couple of years too late. There was a yearning for fundamental change, and a belief that the 2008 election might bring it about. That moment's passed. I don't know anybody who's looking for some unnamed, exciting "change" anymore. Do you? Since he offers no polling information to back up these sweeping statements, it's hard to give them much credibility.

Brooks sees a nation longing for excitement, but the rest of us live in a world where hope is a barely affordable luxury. A lot of Americans are fearful for the future. 80% believe, for example, that the American middle class is in decline [1]. Change for change's sake is a meaningless novelty for the millions of Americans who are struggling just to survive. They're struggling to hold on to what they've got.

Big "transformative" ideas can backfire. Remember "New Coke"? This proposal is political New Coke.

A lopsided deal

What kind of "grand bargain" is Mr. Brooks proposing? "Offer the left something it really craves," he says, like a short-term stimulus plan for the economy. "Then offer the right something it really craves," he says - before launching into laundry list as long as your arm: Corporate tax "reform" (he means tax cuts for corporations). Individual tax reform (he means tax cuts for the wealthy). Social Security "reform" (he means slashing your retirement benefits). Medicare "reform" (he means cutting medical benefits and giving out funny-money vouchers instead).

And, just in case that isn't enough to satisfy the cravings of "the right," he adds: "And other things." In business negotiations we used to call this sort of phrase a "placeholder," a receptacle to be filled later with every item on our wish list.

See what he just did there? He used the outdated "left/right" paradigm to sell us a whole lot of massively unpopular policies, leavened with a few short-term dollars for a very popular one. He's good.

Working without a net

"It should be possible to strengthen the social safety net," writes Brooks, "while modernizing some of the Great Society structures." That makes it a three-fer of Washington clichés: We're already seen bipartisan and transformative, and now we're modernizing too. What would this "modern," "transformed" social safety net look like?

First up is a "Medicare reform plan in which new enrollees would received a fixed contribution from the government, growing a bit faster than inflation." Did you catch that? He tried to slip the real deal right past you. What he calls "reform" is really "demolition." Medicare as we know it would be dismantled and replaced a "fixed contribution" - that is, a voucher - which would be used to buy health coverage on the open market.

This plan wouldn't just eliminate the safety net for senior health care. It would double down on a broken health care system, leaving elderly Americans unable to provide the most basic coverage for themselves. It would grow "a bit faster than inflation" - while health care costs have been growing three and four times faster than inflation! What's more, the elderly would have to purchase that insurance from slick, doubletalking sales types - you know, the kind who try to slip the real deal right past you.

But it's bipartisan, says Brooks. It's endorsed by "Paul Ryan, a Republican, and Alice Rivlin, a Democrat." That's like saying the British attack on New York during the Revolutionary War was supported by "King George III, a Briton, and Benedict Arnold, a American." Besides, as the poll figures show, this isn't about what Alice Rivlin or any other Beltway Democrat wants. It's about what the public wants ... and what's in their best interests.

The Medicare voucher idea may appeal to Brooks, but the electorate hates it. It's opposed by 69% of Democrats, 67% of independents, and 62% of Republicans. [1] His reply might be, "but we're not cutting them to lower the deficit. We're just 'modernizing,' remember?" Even a great salesman like Brooks won't be able to pull that one off. That line plays well with the DC crowd, but nobody else.

Brooks is deliberately vague about Social Security, saying only that the President can "build momentum" for its "reform." Now that we know that "reform" is a euphemism for "annihilation" in his lexicon, we know where this is headed. Eight out of ten voters in another poll oppose cutting the program to reduce the deficit [3]. while six out of ten "would feel unfavorably toward an elected official who says we cannot reduce the deficit without cutting Social Security benefits."

Six out of ten Americans would look unfavorably on a politician who even suggests cutting Social Security? That figure could prove "transformative," all right - on Election Day.

I'm gonna make you a star ...

Brooks summarizes his ideas this way: The "left" gets "an activist job growth agenda" and "industrial policy." The "right" gets "fundamental welfare state reform." Do you catch that? "Fundamental welfare state reform" - that is, the dismantling of the social safety net - is a profound and permanent change. Combine that with Brooks' proposed tax "reforms," and we've now irrevocably dismantled government's social functions in order to provide big tax cuts for wealthy people and corporations.

But that "activist job growth agenda" offered in return is a temporary measure. Even if the "right" honored this deal, it amounts to a few bucks today in return for trillions of dollars ... forever.

And let's have a show of hands: Who believes they'd honor even that lopsided deal?

Back in the fifties record producers would bring kids into the studio to record a song they'd written, and they'd give them $50 in cash for songwriters' rights. That seemed like big money to kids who were hungry and poor, but that fifty bucks sometimes cost singers like Frankie Lymon millions of dollars. This deal's like that. The middle class is being offered a few bucks in upfront money in return for its future rights to retirement security and healthcare. We're all Frankie Lymon now ... except that I doubt we'd even get the fifty bucks.

By the way, Frankie Lymon's big hit was "Why Do Fools Fall In Love?"

They've got the pundits, but we've got the numbers

Brooks says there's an "inchoate longing for change," and the Oxford English Dictionary tells us that "inchoate" means "just begun and so not fully formed or developed; rudimentary." What he really means is that he has no poll numbers to back up his claim. Actually the public mood on these policies is very, uh, choate. Here are more numbers to prove it:

Do Americans want us to invest more in infrastructure? Yes. According to a Campaign for America's Future post-election poll [2], most Americans support that position, including a large majority of swing voters (58% to 35%) and a near-majority of independents (50% to 43%). 80% of those polled supported a five-year strategy to revive American manufacturing.

That means, contra Brooks, that these are hardly "left" ideas. One is an everybody-but-Republicans position, and others are everybody-including-Republicans positions. So the "gimme" in the Brooks proposal isn't for the "left." It's for the American majority - especially the swing voters the President and his party need so desperately.

Brooks' proposed cuts to Medicare and Social Security are so unpopular that they're essentially "everybody but people like David Brooks" positions (and Alice Rivlin too, of course). 68% of all Americans opposed cutting Social Security or Medicare to lower the deficit, including 61% of all Republicans.[1]

So his proposed trade-off is between a short-term idea that most Americans want and long-term ideas most Americans reject. Such a deal ...

Negotiating Against America

Brooks is merely continuing a game that's been played in Washington for months now, frequently with the President's assent and sometimes with his active participation: People pretend there's bartering between the "left" and the "right," with most people somewhere in the middle. But what they're really doing is negotiating against America. They're placing the public's interests and needs on one side of the scale, while the other side holds unpopular ideas supported only by the far right and the wealthy vested interests.

And occasionally, when they think nobody's looking, somebody puts their thumb on the scale.

Apparently the only thing that isn't popular in Washington is popular opinion.

If I were the President, I'd run as fast I can from David Brooks and his ideas. On the other hand, if I were David Brooks - that is, if I wanted to cut Social Security and end Medicare, but I knew that whoever does those things is committing political suicide - I'd do exactly what David Brooks has done. I'd come up with a really "transformative" idea:

Let Obama do it!
_______________________________

You can send a message to the White House, too. More information here: "Tell The President: Stand Up To The Hostage-Takers! Defend Social Security And Medicare"

[1] August Greenberg Quinlan poll for the Democracy Corps and the Campaign for America's Future

[2] Post-election poll for the Democracy Corps and the Campaign for America's Future

[3] Celinda Lake poll for Social Security Works

Bipartisanship vs. Democracy: The President and the Third Way Fallacy
The New Silent Majority
... the Wisdom of the American People ...

This post was produced as part of the Strengthen Social Security campaign.

Piggy Bank Morality: Maya MacGuineas and David Brooks

Richard Eskow — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 17:27:58 -0500

Recent remarks by a would-be Social Security cutter highlight the unspoken agenda behind proposals that claim to "fix" the program by cutting benefits, all in the name of "deficit reduction." Social Security doesn't contribute to the deficit. But it can help decrease it, provided you have no moral qualms about raiding a Trust Fund created for other purposes. It's increasingly clear that this is exactly what some people have in mind. And, as we've come to learn, no would-be raid on America's retirement savings is complete without a lecture on morality.

Funny, isn't it? People who think it's immoral to walk away from an underwater mortgage are encouraging the government to welsh on a loan from the American people. They keep preaching about "thrift" even as their fingers drive deeper into working America's piggy bank. .

We keep hearing that Social Security is "broke," thanks to the well-funded efforts of folks like these. But the Trust Fund currently holds a $2.6 trillion surplus, and it's expected to rise to $4.2 trillion by 2025. That's a lot of money set aside for people's retirement - money some people would rather see used for other purposes, like paying for the spending spree of the last ten years or underwriting tax breaks for the well-to-do.

How much money are we really talking about?

If they could get their hands on the Trust Fund's current surplus, it could cover most of the projected cost of the Iraq war([1]. Or it could pay the combined cost of the last ten years of tax cuts for top 5% earners[2], along the the next ten years' cuts[3] (since it now seems clear they will get extended under the new Congress.) Anybody with a spreadsheet and a detailed Federal budget can find ways to use this money - and believe me, somebody already has.

One of the greatest puzzles behind this well-coordinated attack on retirement benefits has always been: Why Social Security? It's forbidden by law from contributing to the overall deficit, it holds a huge surplus, and its future imbalances can easily be remedied for the next hundred years. Maya MacGuineas is a key player in this effort, and she's done the public a service by addressing a delicate matter that others prefer to ignore: They want that surplus.

Ms. MacGuineas' organization receives major funding from billionaire Pete Peterson, as do many of the other groups promoting the "cut Social Security" line. The Peterson/MacGuineas school, whose other prominent adherents include Alan Simpson and Alice Rivlin, insist that they want to "preserve" Social Security. Yet they persist in emphasizing benefit cuts, while refusing to acknowledge or rebut simple proposals to fix the problem by lifting the cap on payroll taxes.[4]

A graph from the Strengthen Social Security Campaign illustrates the impact of their various proposals on someone earning $43,084:

Their "solution" to a 25% shortfall that begins in 2037 is to begin cutting benefits even earlier,emphasizing benefit cuts for the elderly over tax increases on the well-to-do. Why wouldn't they merely lift the payroll tax from its current cap of $106,800? They never seem to say.

Their proposals are unjust even at first glance. The current cap helps the most prosperous 5%, while everybody else pays the tax on every dollar they earn. Their proposals typically raise the cap until it covers 90% of all income - but that only gets us back to where we were in the 1980's. And once you consider that surplus, the picture becomes even clearer. Diverting the Trust Fund into the overall budget would retroactively make the payroll tax highly regressive. It would also break a moral commitment.

Yet that's exactly where Maya MacGuineas is going. As she told NPR: ""They (sic) are nothing like any trust fund that any one of us would think of. It conjures up an image of really holding savings, and it doesn't do that at all."

Why doesn't the Trust Fund "really hold savings"? Because, says Ms. Guineas,"the policy choices that we have to make good on Social Security obligations are exactly the same with the trust fund or if we'd never had the trust fund. Raise taxes, cut Social Security benefits, cut other government spending, or borrow the money. That's the only way to repay the money."

This argument suggests that Trust Fund money should be thrown into the general budget and made available for other purposes. But Ms. MacGuineas' own choice of words illustrate the moral failing of this approach. It's always been considered unethical not to "make good" on an "obligation" - at least until now. Regrettably, Ms. MacGuineas fails to explore the moral implications of her own words.

Her argument is obligingly repeated by the NPR bloggers who quoted her. They describe the surplus as a "mirage." A sense of déjà vu is warranted at this point, because we've heard it all before. This wordplay is an extension of George W. Bush's staged (and artifical) demonstration that the trust funds are just pieces of paper "sitting in a cabinet," and Alan Simpson's dismissal of the Treasury Department's debts to Social Security as just "IOU's." That "IOU" characterization is misleading. But even if we accept it for a moment, that still leaves the underlying question:

When did our nation stop believe in honoring "IOUs"?

The NPR bloggers write that "the government is lending the Social Security surplus to itself. And the obligation to repay those loans is the trust funds." But the government is not "lending money to itself." Outside the narrowest technical definition[5], it has received a loan, not issued one. And that loan hasn't come from "itself," ethically speaking, but from American workers and their employers. The money in that account - both the principal and the interest - is held in trust to ensure a secure retirement for American workers. Taking that money amounts to robbing tens of millions of Americans of hard-earned retirement funds. Sounds wrong, doesn't it?

That's where David Brooks comes in. Brooks recently said that liberalism has an "economic philosophy that excludes psychology, emotion and morality." In Brooks' inverted world, the benefit slashers are driven by tender-hearted feelings and the "economic surgeons" are the ones who don't cut.

That "emotion" comment is especially peculiar. Whenever reasoned critiques of a plan like Simpson/Bowles are offered, someone like Maya MacGuineas will make snarky remarks about the critics. Her latest? "Stop whining about Bowles-Simpson. Let's make it better!" If nothing else, Mr. Brooks, "whining" suggests emotion. Others in the cutters' camp accuse critics of "a deficit of respect" and "ad hominem attacks." (You mean like calling your opponents "emotionless," "amoral," and "whiners"?)

Another item on the Brooks checklist, "morality," is where things really get awkward for the would-be cutters, a group that includes Brooks himself. "Sorry, we've got to raise the retirement age," Brooks said about the deficit, adding elsewhere that people are "selfish" for wanting to use benefits they've earned in order to have some financial security in their retirement. Apparently for Brooks, some promises are made to be broken.

Funny thing. This is the same David Brooks who bemoaned the "responsibility deficit" that could be seen when "neighbors take on huge mortgages and then just walk away when they go underwater." It looks like some debts are less equal than others.

Brooks says we should "appreciate the old wisdom of common sense: simple regulations, low debt, high savings, hard work, few distortions." That's an admirable list (although it leaves out other common-sense virtues like "charity," "good works," and "helping your neighbor.") But why do we admire people who save? Usually it's because they're putting money aside for their old age. And while this list evokes a pastoral, Laura Ingalls Wilder worldview that may never have existed outside Brooks' imagination, it's missing one item most people would expect to see: "honoring your debts."

Let's leave aside for the moment the radical wealth distribution which these plans would preserve and extend. ("Stop whining about Marx-Engels! Let's make it better!") Here's an ethics question for David Brooks, Pete Peterson, Alan Simpson, and Maya MacGuineas: I don't doubt for a moment that you honor all your debts in your personal lives. I'm sure you pay your bills on time. I'm sure you would never consider welshing on an IOU just because you could get away with it.

So why do you want the government do it?

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[1] As estimated by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes (although their cost estimate is being revised upward by as much as 25 percent). No "deficit commission" has yet proposed ending our involvement in Iraq.
[2] The Bush tax cuts cost nearly $2.5 trillion from 2001 through 2010, according toCitizens for Tax Justice); CTJ also found that 52.5% of the benefit of those cuts went to the wealthiest 5% of Americans. This is a very rough projection of expected future costs which extrapolates from the estimated costs of extending the tax break for the top 2%.
[3] Estimated total cost of tax cuts for the wealthy for the next ten years: $830 billion. Linden and Ettlinger, Center for American Progress.
[4] Lifting the payroll tax cap would fix 95% of the long-term shortfall, and the remaining 5% could be addressed with any number of other revenue programs, such as an 0.5% financial transactional tax that would permit benefits to be increased.
[5] In economists' terms, all government expenditures are categorized together - but then, so are other types of expenditure that are commonly understood to be distinct.

This post was produced as part of the Strengthen Social Security campaign.