I was under the impression that you couldn't shut down the government to avoid default
I'd be happy for a shutdown to occur, because they neuter the GOP for quite some time afterwards
If you stop incurring new expenditures, you should be able to avoid default until you run out of money to make payments on your debt service obligations.
It's a bit late to stop incurring 'new' expenditures. The funds required to get to the end of February were allocated a long time ago.
And if we don't spend the money, it isn't spent. That is the function of a shutdown.
I am hopeful that Obama will resort to Plan B if it comes to that. They can warble about power grabs all they want, but at the end of the day:
-it doesn't really matter what he does in the eyes of conservatives
-he can always say, "Due to the failure of the Republican party to act, I made a decision with precedent (he loves this word) to stop the world economy from collapsing, since the majority of Americans already believe this crisis is their making"
I was under the impression that you couldn't shut down the government to avoid default
I'd be happy for a shutdown to occur, because they neuter the GOP for quite some time afterwards
If you stop incurring new expenditures, you should be able to avoid default until you run out of money to make payments on your debt service obligations.
It's a bit late to stop incurring 'new' expenditures. The funds required to get to the end of February were allocated a long time ago.
And if we don't spend the money, it isn't spent. That is the function of a shutdown.
If we want to yell about executive overreach blatantly breaking the law(ie not following the budget as written) is a pretty big one. The money is already allocated by Congress it's effectively already spent. Unless congress changes that Obama is legally bound to spend that money as written. We're talking about giving the president power to rule by fiat
I was under the impression that you couldn't shut down the government to avoid default
I'd be happy for a shutdown to occur, because they neuter the GOP for quite some time afterwards
If you stop incurring new expenditures, you should be able to avoid default until you run out of money to make payments on your debt service obligations.
It's a bit late to stop incurring 'new' expenditures. The funds required to get to the end of February were allocated a long time ago.
And if we don't spend the money, it isn't spent. That is the function of a shutdown.
If we want to yell about executive overreach blatantly breaking the law(ie not following the budget as written) is a pretty big one. The money is already allocated by Congress it's effectively already spent. Unless congress changes that Obama is legally bound to spend that money as written. We're talking about giving the president power to rule by fiat
Well, currently the Executive branch is already being forced to follow two contradicting laws re: debt ceiling and budget.
GOP talking government shutdown. Every time I go to TPM it feels like I'm reading articles from the Onion. Ugh.
I grew up in Blackburn's district. She represents the Agrestic of both Memphis and Nashville. I assure you, her constituents won't care about a government shutdown until the FAA grounds FedEx because they can't pay ATCs. Then they'll be incandescent with fury that it happened.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I was under the impression that you couldn't shut down the government to avoid default
I'd be happy for a shutdown to occur, because they neuter the GOP for quite some time afterwards
If you stop incurring new expenditures, you should be able to avoid default until you run out of money to make payments on your debt service obligations.
It's a bit late to stop incurring 'new' expenditures. The funds required to get to the end of February were allocated a long time ago.
And if we don't spend the money, it isn't spent. That is the function of a shutdown.
If we want to yell about executive overreach blatantly breaking the law(ie not following the budget as written) is a pretty big one. The money is already allocated by Congress it's effectively already spent. Unless congress changes that Obama is legally bound to spend that money as written. We're talking about giving the president power to rule by fiat
Well, currently the Executive branch is already being forced to follow two contradicting laws re: debt ceiling and budget.
I hate this contradictory laws argument. Federal agencies never have full funding, so they always have to pick and choose between programs, even mandatory programs. This is just at a larger scale. And if the choice is debt service or anything else at all, we should choose debt service every time. If we don't, then we're in real trouble.
It's just, my understanding was that it would severely damage the credit of the United States to default on our domestic obligations as well
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
It all would.
It's a stupid thing to have happen and the GOP should be ashamed of themselves, as should the American people for letting it happen.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
This isn't a natural crisis, it isn't the result of too much debt or a failing economy.
It is a manufactured crisis produced by small minded, short sighted, and, frankly, stupid people who have decided that since they can't win elections they'll resort of playground bullying and economic terrorism.
And we need to stop pretending it is anything else.
Because the White House can say it isn't going to bargain all it wants, the GOP still owns the House and the Dems don't have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate.
Because Americans decided they were mad about not getting their pony, stayed home in 2010, and the 112th Congress got to draw up nice pretty districts to keep their seats safe thanks to the census.
Nope. The various state legislatures got to do that. State elections matter!
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
It's just, my understanding was that it would severely damage the credit of the United States to default on our domestic obligations as well
Damaging our credit is a funny thing. The rating agencies rate US treasuries, but the ratings are not that meaningful, because everyone is so familiar with the US. There was a lot of wailing and rending of clothing back when we were downgraded, because people thought that would result in default under a lot of credit agreements, but those people clearly don't work on them, because ratings never apply to US Treasuries. You might see a provision that requires that money be invested in US Treasuries or AAA rated bonds, but you never see the AAA qualifier applied to US treasury debt, because it is just assumed to be riskless.
If we continue to pay our debt service but stop providing services to out citizens, there will be a lot of repercussions, and we may even see our treasuries be downgraded in response, but if anything, such dedication to making the payments would help our credibility with lenders, not hurt us in real terms.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
That's right, it was the state legislatures, my mistake.
This depends on Obama being bold and willing to upset people. Sorry I have little faith in that happening anymore
My only hope is that second term Obama will be willing to, with no re-election to worry about.
This may be the first, and only, chance he gets to convince me of this.
Actually, expanding the "middle class" to $450K was his first chance, and he failed.
Yeah, fuck it, I have no faith.
The middle class wasn't expanded to 450,000. Everyone just came together to agree on no new taxes for incomes of 450,000 and below. I have a hard time giving much of a fuck considering the capital gains rate actually went up.
The rhetoric has always been about raising taxes on the "middle class" versus "the rich." The $250K number originally came, IIRC, from Obama's response to a "what constitutes the middle class" question back during the debates in '08.
I fail to see how, politically, this doesn't function to redefine the "middle class" for the purposes of policy debate to $450K. Or at least drag it up past the already ludicrous $250K income level that was already being used in the ongoing debate.
Maybe I should blame OWS instead, with their focus on the 99% versus the 1%. Since $450K is, more or less, the 1% cutoff. So now 99% of the country gets to be "middle class" as far as politics goes.
Any way you slice it, $450K was a cave. Yes, capital gains going up was a decent trade, but without fixing the debt ceiling (rather than what we have now) I still call it a cave. So I have little faith that we won't see the exact same thing in any given negotiation.
It also wasn't worth fighting over because the difference in the amount of revenue raised by setting it at 250k instead of 450k was minimal.
Obviously I disagree. It's not about the impact on revenue, though.
I totally agree with Deebaser on this one. When we talk about "middle class" for political purposes I think it makes less sense to talk about income quintiles and more sense to talk about lifestyles. The lifestyle of a household making $400k is not qualitatively different from the lifestyle of a household making $150k. The problem is that the elite financial classes are able to disproportionately affect politics through direct lobbying and media control while simultaneously insulating themselves from the repercussions of that influence by taking advantage of private alternatives to public services - private security, private schools, self-paid healthcare, corporate jets, esoteric and/or offshore tax shelters, etc. Somebody making $400k isn't in that elite class, even if they are by quintiles "upper class." $250k-$450kers mostly live like the $100k-$250kers - they have professional jobs or own small businesses that they have to work at, they don't have vast wealth holdings, they don't have large passive streams of income that they can rely on during periods of unemployment. They have mortgages, commutes, health insurance, and 401ks.
By increasing income taxes on the very top echelons of income and increasing capital gains taxes, the $450k compromise still undoes some of the damage those elite classes have done to the progressive tax system.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
This depends on Obama being bold and willing to upset people. Sorry I have little faith in that happening anymore
My only hope is that second term Obama will be willing to, with no re-election to worry about.
This may be the first, and only, chance he gets to convince me of this.
Actually, expanding the "middle class" to $450K was his first chance, and he failed.
Yeah, fuck it, I have no faith.
The middle class wasn't expanded to 450,000. Everyone just came together to agree on no new taxes for incomes of 450,000 and below. I have a hard time giving much of a fuck considering the capital gains rate actually went up.
The rhetoric has always been about raising taxes on the "middle class" versus "the rich." The $250K number originally came, IIRC, from Obama's response to a "what constitutes the middle class" question back during the debates in '08.
I fail to see how, politically, this doesn't function to redefine the "middle class" for the purposes of policy debate to $450K. Or at least drag it up past the already ludicrous $250K income level that was already being used in the ongoing debate.
Maybe I should blame OWS instead, with their focus on the 99% versus the 1%. Since $450K is, more or less, the 1% cutoff. So now 99% of the country gets to be "middle class" as far as politics goes.
Any way you slice it, $450K was a cave. Yes, capital gains going up was a decent trade, but without fixing the debt ceiling (rather than what we have now) I still call it a cave. So I have little faith that we won't see the exact same thing in any given negotiation.
It also wasn't worth fighting over because the difference in the amount of revenue raised by setting it at 250k instead of 450k was minimal.
Obviously I disagree. It's not about the impact on revenue, though.
I totally agree with Deebaser on this one. When we talk about "middle class" for political purposes I think it makes less sense to talk about income quintiles and more sense to talk about lifestyles. The lifestyle of a household making $400k is not qualitatively different from the lifestyle of a household making $150k. The problem is that the elite financial classes are able to disproportionately affect politics through direct lobbying and media control while simultaneously insulating themselves from the repercussions of that influence by taking advantage of private alternatives to public services - private security, private schools, self-paid healthcare, corporate jets, esoteric and/or offshore tax shelters, etc. Somebody making $400k isn't in that elite class, even if they are by quintiles "upper class." $250k-$450kers mostly live like the $100k-$250kers - they have professional jobs or own small businesses that they have to work at, they don't have vast wealth holdings, they don't have large passive streams of income that they can rely on during periods of unemployment. They have mortgages, commutes, health insurance, and 401ks.
By increasing income taxes on the very top echelons of income and increasing capital gains taxes, the $450k compromise still undoes some of the damage those elite classes have done to the progressive tax system.
Agree 100%. I just want to add that since this is the lifestyle people in that income range live, separating them out from the super rich in the various ways that we are doing now (rates, cap gains, certain deductions) actually makes our tax system more progressive than it has been in decades.
the WH has moved us to the second stage, btw, in the middle.
Here's what confuses me. In the little experience I have with high stakes negotiations, it has always been my strategy to focus on the BATNA. That's not because it's an outcome I would want. I have only been in situations where a negotiated outcome is vastly preferable. But my BATNA has always been my source of negotiations power because it governs how much leverage I have.
Now, from my novice standpoint, Obama is systematically taking his BATNAs of the table (14th amendment, platinum coin), while the Republicans are very good at playing up that possibility.
Can somebody clear up for me what Obama is playing here? I'm sure he's got top level strategists advising him. So what is this?
it's a chicken game; you win by convincing the other guy that you have pre-committed. You destroy all your BATNAs: disable your steering wheel, burn your bridges, tell the Soviets that Reagan is a raving drunk, etc. As far as standard game theory goes, this is entirely sensible. The House can hardly do anything if the WH simply ignores what it said two weeks ago, after all. It's the politics after the decision that is a little troubling, but the population probably pays less attention to WH legal opinions than we do.
Typically you destroy those alternatives to negotiations that save the opposing party from a world of hurt. However, ruling out the 14th and #mintthecoin seems to be taking off the table outcomes the Republican hardliners want to avoid.
To stretch the game of chicken metaphor, the 14th and #mintthecoin strike me like an RPG that Obama has installed on his car. And now he's taken the RPG off saying "look how fucking serious I am." Intuitively it feels wrong.
Unless the hypothesis is that the Republican hardliners would secretly welcome using #mintthecoing or the 14th. If that's the case, Obama would be smart to take them off the table for precisely the reasons you mention.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Polling suggests that the coin option doesn't sell well and the 14th amendment is shakey, so I can see the value in taking it off the table.
You'd have to sell it. And he's not running again.
I fundamentally believe two things:
1) Good policy is good politics.
2) Nobody gives a shit about process outside the Beltway.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
I agree with that, but I also don't think that either minting the coin or a 14th challenge is good policy, really. They're just thing I'd be willing to do to try and workaround an even worse policy.
Well, yes - in Chicken, swerving first is what your opponent wants. If your opponent has an RPG that would already clear you off the road, then it isn't Chicken any more. But it is generally taken as given that the WH would prefer a Congressional debt ceiling increase to other options.
ronya on
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Also, Obama doesn't have to run again, but Congress runs next year.
"Democrats are so bad at government."
"How bad are they?"
"Democrats are so bad at government, they had to PRINT A TRILLION DOLLAR COIN TO KEEP SPENDING MONEY ON GAYMEXICANDEBTPOTTERRORISTABORTION"
Is a winner in midterms. Unless liberals have learned their lesson from 2010.
Again, I don't have much negotiations experience. But my novice experience would be to play up the RPG, even if I don't want to use it and if it were unpopular to use it. Sort of like: "This RPG here? I wouldn't use that in a fair game of chicken now would I? I'm just adding new sights and making sure I'm stocked up on rockets."
I'd be tempted to run a similar strategy. "I really have no intention of using the platinum coin. Congress needs to do its job and raise the debt ceiling. On an unrelated note, Treasury is forming a committee to explore whose face should be on a $1T coin, should we ever mint one."
enc0re on
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
This depends on Obama being bold and willing to upset people. Sorry I have little faith in that happening anymore
My only hope is that second term Obama will be willing to, with no re-election to worry about.
This may be the first, and only, chance he gets to convince me of this.
Actually, expanding the "middle class" to $450K was his first chance, and he failed.
Yeah, fuck it, I have no faith.
The middle class wasn't expanded to 450,000. Everyone just came together to agree on no new taxes for incomes of 450,000 and below. I have a hard time giving much of a fuck considering the capital gains rate actually went up.
The rhetoric has always been about raising taxes on the "middle class" versus "the rich." The $250K number originally came, IIRC, from Obama's response to a "what constitutes the middle class" question back during the debates in '08.
I fail to see how, politically, this doesn't function to redefine the "middle class" for the purposes of policy debate to $450K. Or at least drag it up past the already ludicrous $250K income level that was already being used in the ongoing debate.
Maybe I should blame OWS instead, with their focus on the 99% versus the 1%. Since $450K is, more or less, the 1% cutoff. So now 99% of the country gets to be "middle class" as far as politics goes.
Any way you slice it, $450K was a cave. Yes, capital gains going up was a decent trade, but without fixing the debt ceiling (rather than what we have now) I still call it a cave. So I have little faith that we won't see the exact same thing in any given negotiation.
It also wasn't worth fighting over because the difference in the amount of revenue raised by setting it at 250k instead of 450k was minimal.
Obviously I disagree. It's not about the impact on revenue, though.
I totally agree with Deebaser on this one. When we talk about "middle class" for political purposes I think it makes less sense to talk about income quintiles and more sense to talk about lifestyles. The lifestyle of a household making $400k is not qualitatively different from the lifestyle of a household making $150k. The problem is that the elite financial classes are able to disproportionately affect politics through direct lobbying and media control while simultaneously insulating themselves from the repercussions of that influence by taking advantage of private alternatives to public services - private security, private schools, self-paid healthcare, corporate jets, esoteric and/or offshore tax shelters, etc. Somebody making $400k isn't in that elite class, even if they are by quintiles "upper class." $250k-$450kers mostly live like the $100k-$250kers - they have professional jobs or own small businesses that they have to work at, they don't have vast wealth holdings, they don't have large passive streams of income that they can rely on during periods of unemployment. They have mortgages, commutes, health insurance, and 401ks.
By increasing income taxes on the very top echelons of income and increasing capital gains taxes, the $450k compromise still undoes some of the damage those elite classes have done to the progressive tax system.
"The lifestyle of a household making $400k is not qualitatively different from the lifestyle of a household making $150k." Could that be because $150k per year is still not middle class? The median household income in this country is 45k. Even today with two earners in a lot of households, the "middle" of the middle class is probably two adults collectively earning 60-65k.
For the purposes of tax discussions, in terms of what a tax hike is going to mean for that family, I agree that the 150k and the 400k family are both going to react to a tax hike the same way. But that same tax hike is going to hurt a household making 50-70k a lot more.
I'm still generally happy with the deal we got (assuming, of course, that the decision to push the sequestration/debt ceiling further out doesn't come back and bite us in the ass), but I also agree that the national conversational benchmark on who is or is not part of the middle class is fucked.
Again, I don't have much negotiations experience. But my novice experience would be to play up the RPG, even if I don't want to use it and if it were unpopular to use it. Sort of like: "This RPG here? I wouldn't use that in a fair game of chicken now would I? I'm just adding new sights and making sure I'm stocked up on rockets."
I'd be tempted to run a similar strategy. "I really have no intention of using the platinum coin. Congress needs to do its job and raise the debt ceiling. On an unrelated note, Treasury is forming a committee to explore whose face should be on a $1T coin, should we ever mint one."
Well, what payoffs are you assigning here? It is usually taken as given that the House would prefer that the WH play the 14th over any debt-ceiling legislation.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Typically you destroy those alternatives to negotiations that save the opposing party from a world of hurt. However, ruling out the 14th and #mintthecoin seems to be taking off the table outcomes the Republican hardliners want to avoid.
To stretch the game of chicken metaphor, the 14th and #mintthecoin strike me like an RPG that Obama has installed on his car. And now he's taken the RPG off saying "look how fucking serious I am." Intuitively it feels wrong.
Unless the hypothesis is that the Republican hardliners would secretly welcome using #mintthecoing or the 14th. If that's the case, Obama would be smart to take them off the table for precisely the reasons you mention.
Secretly welcome may be the wrong term, but I do suspect that they would prefer to not compromise on their stance, regardless of whether they ultimately win or lose, and if they lose, they would prefer not to see the country default, even if they are prepared to make it so.
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Deebaseron my way to work in a suit and a tieAhhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered Userregular
This depends on Obama being bold and willing to upset people. Sorry I have little faith in that happening anymore
My only hope is that second term Obama will be willing to, with no re-election to worry about.
This may be the first, and only, chance he gets to convince me of this.
Actually, expanding the "middle class" to $450K was his first chance, and he failed.
Yeah, fuck it, I have no faith.
The middle class wasn't expanded to 450,000. Everyone just came together to agree on no new taxes for incomes of 450,000 and below. I have a hard time giving much of a fuck considering the capital gains rate actually went up.
The rhetoric has always been about raising taxes on the "middle class" versus "the rich." The $250K number originally came, IIRC, from Obama's response to a "what constitutes the middle class" question back during the debates in '08.
I fail to see how, politically, this doesn't function to redefine the "middle class" for the purposes of policy debate to $450K. Or at least drag it up past the already ludicrous $250K income level that was already being used in the ongoing debate.
Maybe I should blame OWS instead, with their focus on the 99% versus the 1%. Since $450K is, more or less, the 1% cutoff. So now 99% of the country gets to be "middle class" as far as politics goes.
Any way you slice it, $450K was a cave. Yes, capital gains going up was a decent trade, but without fixing the debt ceiling (rather than what we have now) I still call it a cave. So I have little faith that we won't see the exact same thing in any given negotiation.
It also wasn't worth fighting over because the difference in the amount of revenue raised by setting it at 250k instead of 450k was minimal.
Obviously I disagree. It's not about the impact on revenue, though.
I totally agree with Deebaser on this one. When we talk about "middle class" for political purposes I think it makes less sense to talk about income quintiles and more sense to talk about lifestyles. The lifestyle of a household making $400k is not qualitatively different from the lifestyle of a household making $150k. The problem is that the elite financial classes are able to disproportionately affect politics through direct lobbying and media control while simultaneously insulating themselves from the repercussions of that influence by taking advantage of private alternatives to public services - private security, private schools, self-paid healthcare, corporate jets, esoteric and/or offshore tax shelters, etc. Somebody making $400k isn't in that elite class, even if they are by quintiles "upper class." $250k-$450kers mostly live like the $100k-$250kers - they have professional jobs or own small businesses that they have to work at, they don't have vast wealth holdings, they don't have large passive streams of income that they can rely on during periods of unemployment. They have mortgages, commutes, health insurance, and 401ks.
By increasing income taxes on the very top echelons of income and increasing capital gains taxes, the $450k compromise still undoes some of the damage those elite classes have done to the progressive tax system.
"The lifestyle of a household making $400k is not qualitatively different from the lifestyle of a household making $150k." Could that be because $150k per year is still not middle class? The median household income in this country is 45k. Even today with two earners in a lot of households, the "middle" of the middle class is probably two adults collectively earning 60-65k.
For the purposes of tax discussions, in terms of what a tax hike is going to mean for that family, I agree that the 150k and the 400k family are both going to react to a tax hike the same way. But that same tax hike is going to hurt a household making 50-70k a lot more.
I'm still generally happy with the deal we got (assuming, of course, that the decision to push the sequestration/debt ceiling further out doesn't come back and bite us in the ass), but I also agree that the national conversational benchmark on who is or is not part of the middle class is fucked.
All wage earners in the US not on food stamps are "middle class". Middle class is a dumb imprecise term used because not many people want to be called "working class", even though that's what they usually mean when they say "middle class".
Deebaser on
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Deebaseron my way to work in a suit and a tieAhhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered Userregular
I hate that term. hate it. hate it. hate it.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
This depends on Obama being bold and willing to upset people. Sorry I have little faith in that happening anymore
My only hope is that second term Obama will be willing to, with no re-election to worry about.
This may be the first, and only, chance he gets to convince me of this.
Actually, expanding the "middle class" to $450K was his first chance, and he failed.
Yeah, fuck it, I have no faith.
The middle class wasn't expanded to 450,000. Everyone just came together to agree on no new taxes for incomes of 450,000 and below. I have a hard time giving much of a fuck considering the capital gains rate actually went up.
The rhetoric has always been about raising taxes on the "middle class" versus "the rich." The $250K number originally came, IIRC, from Obama's response to a "what constitutes the middle class" question back during the debates in '08.
I fail to see how, politically, this doesn't function to redefine the "middle class" for the purposes of policy debate to $450K. Or at least drag it up past the already ludicrous $250K income level that was already being used in the ongoing debate.
Maybe I should blame OWS instead, with their focus on the 99% versus the 1%. Since $450K is, more or less, the 1% cutoff. So now 99% of the country gets to be "middle class" as far as politics goes.
Any way you slice it, $450K was a cave. Yes, capital gains going up was a decent trade, but without fixing the debt ceiling (rather than what we have now) I still call it a cave. So I have little faith that we won't see the exact same thing in any given negotiation.
It also wasn't worth fighting over because the difference in the amount of revenue raised by setting it at 250k instead of 450k was minimal.
Obviously I disagree. It's not about the impact on revenue, though.
I totally agree with Deebaser on this one. When we talk about "middle class" for political purposes I think it makes less sense to talk about income quintiles and more sense to talk about lifestyles. The lifestyle of a household making $400k is not qualitatively different from the lifestyle of a household making $150k. The problem is that the elite financial classes are able to disproportionately affect politics through direct lobbying and media control while simultaneously insulating themselves from the repercussions of that influence by taking advantage of private alternatives to public services - private security, private schools, self-paid healthcare, corporate jets, esoteric and/or offshore tax shelters, etc. Somebody making $400k isn't in that elite class, even if they are by quintiles "upper class." $250k-$450kers mostly live like the $100k-$250kers - they have professional jobs or own small businesses that they have to work at, they don't have vast wealth holdings, they don't have large passive streams of income that they can rely on during periods of unemployment. They have mortgages, commutes, health insurance, and 401ks.
By increasing income taxes on the very top echelons of income and increasing capital gains taxes, the $450k compromise still undoes some of the damage those elite classes have done to the progressive tax system.
"The lifestyle of a household making $400k is not qualitatively different from the lifestyle of a household making $150k." Could that be because $150k per year is still not middle class? The median household income in this country is 45k. Even today with two earners in a lot of households, the "middle" of the middle class is probably two adults collectively earning 60-65k.
For the purposes of tax discussions, in terms of what a tax hike is going to mean for that family, I agree that the 150k and the 400k family are both going to react to a tax hike the same way. But that same tax hike is going to hurt a household making 50-70k a lot more.
I'm still generally happy with the deal we got (assuming, of course, that the decision to push the sequestration/debt ceiling further out doesn't come back and bite us in the ass), but I also agree that the national conversational benchmark on who is or is not part of the middle class is fucked.
But the $150k (and probably the $450k) family are still living what I would say is a traditional middle class lifestyle. House with a mortgage. Family vacations. Paying (at least in part) for their children's college educations. But they still aren't touching the lifestyle of the traditional middle class in other ways (likely both parents work, no hired help, etc.).
The term "middle class" doesn't always refer to the middle income quintiles. . .
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
My childhood started out in poverty, then went from lower middle class, to "true" middle class, to upper middle class before I was 18.
Middle class.
middle class
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I'm going by the earlier chart posted, whereby the GOP has three actions, not two. The GOP wants a negotiated settlement that extracts... whatever they want out of a debt confrontation. They prefer this the most. Then they have any legislative outcome where they don't achieve these, like a clean debt increase, vs no legislative outcome at all (and the WH plays the 14th). You may take it as given that the GOP do not secretly desire the 14th over their preferred legislative outcome.
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Deebaseron my way to work in a suit and a tieAhhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered Userregular
This depends on Obama being bold and willing to upset people. Sorry I have little faith in that happening anymore
My only hope is that second term Obama will be willing to, with no re-election to worry about.
This may be the first, and only, chance he gets to convince me of this.
Actually, expanding the "middle class" to $450K was his first chance, and he failed.
Yeah, fuck it, I have no faith.
The middle class wasn't expanded to 450,000. Everyone just came together to agree on no new taxes for incomes of 450,000 and below. I have a hard time giving much of a fuck considering the capital gains rate actually went up.
The rhetoric has always been about raising taxes on the "middle class" versus "the rich." The $250K number originally came, IIRC, from Obama's response to a "what constitutes the middle class" question back during the debates in '08.
I fail to see how, politically, this doesn't function to redefine the "middle class" for the purposes of policy debate to $450K. Or at least drag it up past the already ludicrous $250K income level that was already being used in the ongoing debate.
Maybe I should blame OWS instead, with their focus on the 99% versus the 1%. Since $450K is, more or less, the 1% cutoff. So now 99% of the country gets to be "middle class" as far as politics goes.
Any way you slice it, $450K was a cave. Yes, capital gains going up was a decent trade, but without fixing the debt ceiling (rather than what we have now) I still call it a cave. So I have little faith that we won't see the exact same thing in any given negotiation.
It also wasn't worth fighting over because the difference in the amount of revenue raised by setting it at 250k instead of 450k was minimal.
Obviously I disagree. It's not about the impact on revenue, though.
I totally agree with Deebaser on this one. When we talk about "middle class" for political purposes I think it makes less sense to talk about income quintiles and more sense to talk about lifestyles. The lifestyle of a household making $400k is not qualitatively different from the lifestyle of a household making $150k. The problem is that the elite financial classes are able to disproportionately affect politics through direct lobbying and media control while simultaneously insulating themselves from the repercussions of that influence by taking advantage of private alternatives to public services - private security, private schools, self-paid healthcare, corporate jets, esoteric and/or offshore tax shelters, etc. Somebody making $400k isn't in that elite class, even if they are by quintiles "upper class." $250k-$450kers mostly live like the $100k-$250kers - they have professional jobs or own small businesses that they have to work at, they don't have vast wealth holdings, they don't have large passive streams of income that they can rely on during periods of unemployment. They have mortgages, commutes, health insurance, and 401ks.
By increasing income taxes on the very top echelons of income and increasing capital gains taxes, the $450k compromise still undoes some of the damage those elite classes have done to the progressive tax system.
"The lifestyle of a household making $400k is not qualitatively different from the lifestyle of a household making $150k." Could that be because $150k per year is still not middle class? The median household income in this country is 45k. Even today with two earners in a lot of households, the "middle" of the middle class is probably two adults collectively earning 60-65k.
For the purposes of tax discussions, in terms of what a tax hike is going to mean for that family, I agree that the 150k and the 400k family are both going to react to a tax hike the same way. But that same tax hike is going to hurt a household making 50-70k a lot more.
I'm still generally happy with the deal we got (assuming, of course, that the decision to push the sequestration/debt ceiling further out doesn't come back and bite us in the ass), but I also agree that the national conversational benchmark on who is or is not part of the middle class is fucked.
Possibly, but I think the larger point is that people making 450k probably are middle class, in that they are still living middle class lifestyles. Should they pay more? Perhaps, but people making that much money are usually still working for it. They might be a cosmetic surgeon in a a wealthy suburb instead of a GP in a small town, but they're not quite at the point where their accrued money becomes more valuable than their time earning it, as is the case with the truly wealthy in this country.
But the $150k (and probably the $450k) family are still living what I would say is a traditional middle class lifestyle. House with a mortgage. Family vacations. Paying (at least in part) for their children's college educations. But they still aren't touching the lifestyle of the traditional middle class in other ways (likely both parents work, no hired help, etc.).
The term "middle class" doesn't always refer to the middle income quintiles. . .
I thought we discovered in the 'Understanding How People Live' thread that the perception of class by the 'merely rich', such as you and your friends, has very little to do with the reality of the situation.
At $450k, someone is making an order of magnitude more than someone who is normally considered solid middle class.
Having a mortgage doesn't make you middle class any more than having a car or eating three meals a day does. Even at $250k a year, you are at an income level that - even in the most expensive places in America - allows for many luxuries in every day life. Luxuries ranging from Manhattan apartments to purchasing designer clothing or handbags on a whim.
At that income level, a person is likely to have no fear of losing their job, because they will easily find another job that will pay a comparable wage.
In a middle class home, both parents work because it's necessary. Not for luxuries, not because they have a $8,000 / month house payment, not because the wife is trying to start a line of clothes, but because they need to. Middle class considers 'hired help' to be having a lawn service mow your lawn, Mollie Maid pick up your home once a week, or a dry cleaner launder your clothes for you. Not having a butler or live-in maid / nanny.
Please SKFM, stop telling us what middle class is. You may not realize it, but you're embarrassing yourself.
Stated more succinctly, my contention is that if we can divide the world into employees serving a productive purpose and employees digging and filling in ditches, the recession (which to be clear was not a result of or response to over employment) revealed that there were more ditch diggers than previously thought. Now that this has been revealed, I would expect hiring to go up where productive as demand rises, but the known ditch diggers will not be replaced, and do employment relative demand will be lower.
But as we've previously stated numerous times you're ignoring the obvious alternative explaination: that there was much less overemployment than the workforce reduction implies; instead, many companies are using a short-term "slash and burn" strategy to overwork their employers, because when they burn out they can be replaced.
EDIT: Unless you're defining "overemployment" as "That level of workload which leaves any employee with more than the energy to just barely survive until tomorrow".
Please SKFM, stop telling us what middle class is. You may not realize it, but you're embarrassing yourself.
The fact that there are more than him suggesting that 450k is an acceptable upper limit suggests that this statement is false.
re: overemployment: It seems fairly clear to me that he's using a definition fairly close to "what you get when you are employing more people than the current labor market requires you to." If the workers will put up with 60 or 80 hour weeks, then that is all the market requires. If the workers come up with some sort of unified negotiating body that can enforce a 40 hour work week, then the market requirements become that.
"The lifestyle of a household making $400k is not qualitatively different from the lifestyle of a household making $150k." Could that be because $150k per year is still not middle class? The median household income in this country is 45k. Even today with two earners in a lot of households, the "middle" of the middle class is probably two adults collectively earning 60-65k.
Sure. But even then, that is largely irrelevant to a tax code change of $250k to $450k.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Stated more succinctly, my contention is that if we can divide the world into employees serving a productive purpose and employees digging and filling in ditches, the recession (which to be clear was not a result of or response to over employment) revealed that there were more ditch diggers than previously thought. Now that this has been revealed, I would expect hiring to go up where productive as demand rises, but the known ditch diggers will not be replaced, and do employment relative demand will be lower.
But as we've previously stated numerous times you're ignoring the obvious alternative explaination: that there was much less overemployment than the workforce reduction implies; instead, many companies are using a short-term "slash and burn" strategy to overwork their employers, because when they burn out they can be replaced.
EDIT: Unless you're defining "overemployment" as "That level of workload which leaves any employee with more than the energy to just barely survive until tomorrow".
I define overemployment as employing more people than are needed to complete the job to a standard that you consider adequate, and which, on the whole, optimizes outcomes for the company. Turnover may be a concern, and may argue in favor of hiring more people (or paying people more) to reduce turnover, but in general, if you can get people to do the job on a cost efficient basis then anything more is probably overemployment. Please note that irrationality regarding hiring is not necessarily a bad thing (its a matter of what the owners' desire, and the well being and culture of a company may be more important to them than money) and the company/market determines what is an adequate quality of work, so rationality does not necessarily require you to fire excellent employee X because employee Y will do a worse (but still acceptable to many) job for less pay.
For fucks sake are we still arguing what constitutes middle class?
It doesn't matter that you are working for your money, because that how you are supposed to earn it. Fuck Billionaires can claim to work, doesn't meant that they are not rich. Working for money is how you make money. Its not something lowbrow plebeian thing only the "working" class has to endure.
The fact that people earning more then 150k still have a lifestyle that resembles the middle class has nothing to do them being middle class and everything to do with them being human beings. No matter how rich you are you still need to eat,sleep and live like the rest of us. Pretending that rich people are so different that they have fundamentally different biological needs is asinine. The quality of their life is the difference, not any intrinsic behavior.
Which brings me to the last point:
If 450k is "comfortable", then what the fuck are the 100 million people living on 60k? Because they sure as hell don't make enough to be comfortable. Shit even if you lowered to 250k, there is a gap, big enough to drive a truck trough. AND DON'T give me "they have a higher cost of living" bullshit. Because if its possible to live on 60k then being unable to live on 250k is a personal failure. There are preciously few places that demand 250k income and guess what? rich people don't have to live in any of them. There are plenty of 60K neighborhoods around, since they are the majority. Bitching about cost of living is like complaining that your brand new Mercedes costs more then a Hyundai and saying you are poor because you can't afford a personal jet.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
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Deebaseron my way to work in a suit and a tieAhhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered Userregular
Having a mortgage doesn't make you middle class any more than having a car or eating three meals a day does. Even at $250k a year, you are at an income level that - even in the most expensive places in America - allows for many luxuries in every day life. Luxuries ranging from Manhattan apartments to purchasing designer clothing or handbags on a whim.
Having to go to work at least 5 days a week for 40 some odd years or living on the streets makes you middle (working) class. Who gives a flip about a few random luxuries? It doesn't fundamentally change how you live your life. It just makes it easier to breath when bills need to be paid.
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And if we don't spend the money, it isn't spent. That is the function of a shutdown.
If we want to yell about executive overreach blatantly breaking the law(ie not following the budget as written) is a pretty big one. The money is already allocated by Congress it's effectively already spent. Unless congress changes that Obama is legally bound to spend that money as written. We're talking about giving the president power to rule by fiat
Well, currently the Executive branch is already being forced to follow two contradicting laws re: debt ceiling and budget.
I grew up in Blackburn's district. She represents the Agrestic of both Memphis and Nashville. I assure you, her constituents won't care about a government shutdown until the FAA grounds FedEx because they can't pay ATCs. Then they'll be incandescent with fury that it happened.
I hate this contradictory laws argument. Federal agencies never have full funding, so they always have to pick and choose between programs, even mandatory programs. This is just at a larger scale. And if the choice is debt service or anything else at all, we should choose debt service every time. If we don't, then we're in real trouble.
It's a stupid thing to have happen and the GOP should be ashamed of themselves, as should the American people for letting it happen.
It is a manufactured crisis produced by small minded, short sighted, and, frankly, stupid people who have decided that since they can't win elections they'll resort of playground bullying and economic terrorism.
And we need to stop pretending it is anything else.
Nope. The various state legislatures got to do that. State elections matter!
Damaging our credit is a funny thing. The rating agencies rate US treasuries, but the ratings are not that meaningful, because everyone is so familiar with the US. There was a lot of wailing and rending of clothing back when we were downgraded, because people thought that would result in default under a lot of credit agreements, but those people clearly don't work on them, because ratings never apply to US Treasuries. You might see a provision that requires that money be invested in US Treasuries or AAA rated bonds, but you never see the AAA qualifier applied to US treasury debt, because it is just assumed to be riskless.
If we continue to pay our debt service but stop providing services to out citizens, there will be a lot of repercussions, and we may even see our treasuries be downgraded in response, but if anything, such dedication to making the payments would help our credibility with lenders, not hurt us in real terms.
Same principle, though.
I totally agree with Deebaser on this one. When we talk about "middle class" for political purposes I think it makes less sense to talk about income quintiles and more sense to talk about lifestyles. The lifestyle of a household making $400k is not qualitatively different from the lifestyle of a household making $150k. The problem is that the elite financial classes are able to disproportionately affect politics through direct lobbying and media control while simultaneously insulating themselves from the repercussions of that influence by taking advantage of private alternatives to public services - private security, private schools, self-paid healthcare, corporate jets, esoteric and/or offshore tax shelters, etc. Somebody making $400k isn't in that elite class, even if they are by quintiles "upper class." $250k-$450kers mostly live like the $100k-$250kers - they have professional jobs or own small businesses that they have to work at, they don't have vast wealth holdings, they don't have large passive streams of income that they can rely on during periods of unemployment. They have mortgages, commutes, health insurance, and 401ks.
By increasing income taxes on the very top echelons of income and increasing capital gains taxes, the $450k compromise still undoes some of the damage those elite classes have done to the progressive tax system.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Agree 100%. I just want to add that since this is the lifestyle people in that income range live, separating them out from the super rich in the various ways that we are doing now (rates, cap gains, certain deductions) actually makes our tax system more progressive than it has been in decades.
@enc0re
it's a chicken game; you win by convincing the other guy that you have pre-committed. You destroy all your BATNAs: disable your steering wheel, burn your bridges, tell the Soviets that Reagan is a raving drunk, etc. As far as standard game theory goes, this is entirely sensible. The House can hardly do anything if the WH simply ignores what it said two weeks ago, after all. It's the politics after the decision that is a little troubling, but the population probably pays less attention to WH legal opinions than we do.
To stretch the game of chicken metaphor, the 14th and #mintthecoin strike me like an RPG that Obama has installed on his car. And now he's taken the RPG off saying "look how fucking serious I am." Intuitively it feels wrong.
Unless the hypothesis is that the Republican hardliners would secretly welcome using #mintthecoing or the 14th. If that's the case, Obama would be smart to take them off the table for precisely the reasons you mention.
I fundamentally believe two things:
1) Good policy is good politics.
2) Nobody gives a shit about process outside the Beltway.
"Democrats are so bad at government."
"How bad are they?"
"Democrats are so bad at government, they had to PRINT A TRILLION DOLLAR COIN TO KEEP SPENDING MONEY ON GAYMEXICANDEBTPOTTERRORISTABORTION"
Is a winner in midterms. Unless liberals have learned their lesson from 2010.
Also, based on the last three elections Democrats actually fought, those ads aren't effective.
I'd be tempted to run a similar strategy. "I really have no intention of using the platinum coin. Congress needs to do its job and raise the debt ceiling. On an unrelated note, Treasury is forming a committee to explore whose face should be on a $1T coin, should we ever mint one."
"The lifestyle of a household making $400k is not qualitatively different from the lifestyle of a household making $150k." Could that be because $150k per year is still not middle class? The median household income in this country is 45k. Even today with two earners in a lot of households, the "middle" of the middle class is probably two adults collectively earning 60-65k.
For the purposes of tax discussions, in terms of what a tax hike is going to mean for that family, I agree that the 150k and the 400k family are both going to react to a tax hike the same way. But that same tax hike is going to hurt a household making 50-70k a lot more.
I'm still generally happy with the deal we got (assuming, of course, that the decision to push the sequestration/debt ceiling further out doesn't come back and bite us in the ass), but I also agree that the national conversational benchmark on who is or is not part of the middle class is fucked.
Well, what payoffs are you assigning here? It is usually taken as given that the House would prefer that the WH play the 14th over any debt-ceiling legislation.
Secretly welcome may be the wrong term, but I do suspect that they would prefer to not compromise on their stance, regardless of whether they ultimately win or lose, and if they lose, they would prefer not to see the country default, even if they are prepared to make it so.
All wage earners in the US not on food stamps are "middle class". Middle class is a dumb imprecise term used because not many people want to be called "working class", even though that's what they usually mean when they say "middle class".
But the $150k (and probably the $450k) family are still living what I would say is a traditional middle class lifestyle. House with a mortgage. Family vacations. Paying (at least in part) for their children's college educations. But they still aren't touching the lifestyle of the traditional middle class in other ways (likely both parents work, no hired help, etc.).
The term "middle class" doesn't always refer to the middle income quintiles. . .
Middle class.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Awesoming because I can't find the "I hope you get skull fucked by a hobo" button.
Possibly, but I think the larger point is that people making 450k probably are middle class, in that they are still living middle class lifestyles. Should they pay more? Perhaps, but people making that much money are usually still working for it. They might be a cosmetic surgeon in a a wealthy suburb instead of a GP in a small town, but they're not quite at the point where their accrued money becomes more valuable than their time earning it, as is the case with the truly wealthy in this country.
I thought we discovered in the 'Understanding How People Live' thread that the perception of class by the 'merely rich', such as you and your friends, has very little to do with the reality of the situation.
At $450k, someone is making an order of magnitude more than someone who is normally considered solid middle class.
Having a mortgage doesn't make you middle class any more than having a car or eating three meals a day does. Even at $250k a year, you are at an income level that - even in the most expensive places in America - allows for many luxuries in every day life. Luxuries ranging from Manhattan apartments to purchasing designer clothing or handbags on a whim.
At that income level, a person is likely to have no fear of losing their job, because they will easily find another job that will pay a comparable wage.
In a middle class home, both parents work because it's necessary. Not for luxuries, not because they have a $8,000 / month house payment, not because the wife is trying to start a line of clothes, but because they need to. Middle class considers 'hired help' to be having a lawn service mow your lawn, Mollie Maid pick up your home once a week, or a dry cleaner launder your clothes for you. Not having a butler or live-in maid / nanny.
Please SKFM, stop telling us what middle class is. You may not realize it, but you're embarrassing yourself.
But as we've previously stated numerous times you're ignoring the obvious alternative explaination: that there was much less overemployment than the workforce reduction implies; instead, many companies are using a short-term "slash and burn" strategy to overwork their employers, because when they burn out they can be replaced.
EDIT: Unless you're defining "overemployment" as "That level of workload which leaves any employee with more than the energy to just barely survive until tomorrow".
re: overemployment: It seems fairly clear to me that he's using a definition fairly close to "what you get when you are employing more people than the current labor market requires you to." If the workers will put up with 60 or 80 hour weeks, then that is all the market requires. If the workers come up with some sort of unified negotiating body that can enforce a 40 hour work week, then the market requirements become that.
Sure. But even then, that is largely irrelevant to a tax code change of $250k to $450k.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I define overemployment as employing more people than are needed to complete the job to a standard that you consider adequate, and which, on the whole, optimizes outcomes for the company. Turnover may be a concern, and may argue in favor of hiring more people (or paying people more) to reduce turnover, but in general, if you can get people to do the job on a cost efficient basis then anything more is probably overemployment. Please note that irrationality regarding hiring is not necessarily a bad thing (its a matter of what the owners' desire, and the well being and culture of a company may be more important to them than money) and the company/market determines what is an adequate quality of work, so rationality does not necessarily require you to fire excellent employee X because employee Y will do a worse (but still acceptable to many) job for less pay.
It doesn't matter that you are working for your money, because that how you are supposed to earn it. Fuck Billionaires can claim to work, doesn't meant that they are not rich. Working for money is how you make money. Its not something lowbrow plebeian thing only the "working" class has to endure.
The fact that people earning more then 150k still have a lifestyle that resembles the middle class has nothing to do them being middle class and everything to do with them being human beings. No matter how rich you are you still need to eat,sleep and live like the rest of us. Pretending that rich people are so different that they have fundamentally different biological needs is asinine. The quality of their life is the difference, not any intrinsic behavior.
Which brings me to the last point:
If 450k is "comfortable", then what the fuck are the 100 million people living on 60k? Because they sure as hell don't make enough to be comfortable. Shit even if you lowered to 250k, there is a gap, big enough to drive a truck trough. AND DON'T give me "they have a higher cost of living" bullshit. Because if its possible to live on 60k then being unable to live on 250k is a personal failure. There are preciously few places that demand 250k income and guess what? rich people don't have to live in any of them. There are plenty of 60K neighborhoods around, since they are the majority. Bitching about cost of living is like complaining that your brand new Mercedes costs more then a Hyundai and saying you are poor because you can't afford a personal jet.
Having to go to work at least 5 days a week for 40 some odd years or living on the streets makes you middle (working) class. Who gives a flip about a few random luxuries? It doesn't fundamentally change how you live your life. It just makes it easier to breath when bills need to be paid.