I Needed This …

Confession time.

Regrettably, I must admit I’ve been swayed by the several negative news items surrounding many (and often, most) of President Biden’s actions and decisions over the past year. So much so that I’ve expressed my disappointment in him “out loud.”

Then I read Heather’s most recent newsletter.

As she so carefully and thoroughly went down the list of his accomplishments throughout 2021, I was a bit ashamed that I had allowed myself to be so influenced by the media and their seemingly incessant desire to focus on the negative.

I am not saying that Biden has been a perfect leader.

There are definitely areas where I think he could have handled things better. As an example, I personally feel he (or perhaps the news media?) put far too much focus on trying to rein in the virus. Naturally we all want it to “just go away,” but it is not a country or a personality that can be fought and overcome. Rather, it is a pernicious and invisible enemy that tends to defy all manner of attack.

And to that point, there’s really only so much we can do …

In any case, this was just one of the reasons why I needed to read what Heather outlined in her newsletter about President Biden. I needed to be reminded of his several accomplishments, rather than allowing myself to be so influenced by the (seemingly innate) negativism of the media.

As well as the ongoing criticism by various Republicans!

I trust you will gain as much benefit as I did from Heather’s excellent synopsis of President Biden’s first year in office.

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

The Dark Places

I’m sure I don’t need to repeat myself, but I’m going to anyway … I’m a fan of Heather Cox Richardson. 😊 I read every newsletter she writes … and recently started reading some of the comments as well.

Awhile back, I posted the comments of an individual who had written what I was thinking … and today, I found another person who expressed my thoughts. And maybe yours as well. In any case, for the benefit of those who might have missed it, following is a portion of Eric O’Donnell’s remarks in response to Heather’s most recent newsletter where she talks about recent and upcoming elections.

Trump touched the dark places in tens of millions of American souls. He awoke and aroused those who hate and fear cities, hated a black President, hated the smug entitlement of Hillary Clinton, hated being preached to about climate, hated the speed with which the new economy had trashed their towns and workplaces. Above all they felt looked down upon by others whom they perceived to be riding a higher horse.

The podcast “S***Town” opened millions of eyes to present day life in the poorer regions of the South. The characters in this extraordinarily interesting true saga live lives bereft of meaning. Their expressed philosophy, uttered before they do anything illegal, dangerous or profoundly anti-social, is “Fuck it.” Meaning this will probably bite me in the ass, but I’m going to do it anyway. How much worse can my life get?

Those are the people Trump galvanized. They’d been waiting decades for someone to spit on those whom they perceived to be elites and Trump did that and then some.

They followed him and gradually the movement became larger and larger, spreading like wildfire, propelling Trump to an election win that shocked everybody, including those who felt they were just along for a good ride.

Trump became a god to many of them. They would criticize nothing he did, twisting every evil word and deed around until they could make it sound moral or at least, justified in the opportunity to give “the elites” another well-deserved kick.

The movement became a cult. It is now fully engraved in the psyche of half – give or take – of America. Their fealty is limitless. “I’d walk behind Trump and clean up his shit”, one proud to be a Trump serf declared to the media just before the 2020 election.

These people are not going away. Democrats are going to lose key elections to them if the candidate makes the slightest error. And so, McAuliffe last night.

Here is the link to O’Donnell’s complete comment.
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Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

Plan For America

As many of you know, I’m a fan of Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletters. I admit some are more stimulating than others, but overall, I like what she has to say, which is why I often share her remarks on my blog.

In her most recent newsletter, she talked about the current in-the-news bill related to government funding. But what really caught my interest was the comment section — in particular, one submitted by “Angela,” in which she included the full content of an article written by David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and editor of the DCReport (a non-profit news service).

As soon as I finished reading it, I knew I wanted to share what he had to say. 

What particularly impressed me was how Mr. Johnston clearly explained President Biden’s “American Families Plan” and counteracted those who dispute its value. I also liked the way he compared it to the many bloated programs that are currently part of the U.S. budget.

Mr. Johnston entitled his article: “How $3 a Day Can Buy America a Rich Future.”

Making Sense of Big, Scary Budget Numbers

How much would you be willing to invest for a better future for yourself, today’s youngsters and beyond?

Would you be willing to invest $3 a day?

That’s more than the gross upfront cost of President Joe Biden’s human infrastructure bill.

Sadly, that’s not how news reports describe the American Families Plan. Across the board, our major news organizations cite a big, scary and ultimately meaningless number: $3.5 trillion.

To grasp what a huge and meaningless number that is, imagine putting matches to dollars bills. If you lit one greenback per second it would take 110,985 years to burn all that money.

Folks who make at least $100,000 per day would bear 86% of the cost of Biden’s human infrastructure plan.

But the Biden plan money won’t be consumed; it will be invested.

When our Air Force planes and Navy ships burn kerosene and marine diesel fuel, tax dollars used to buy that fuel are shot out as exhaust. That’s tax dollars consumed.

Biden’s plan adds value, making each dollar invested today worth more dollars in the future by increasing incomes, creating private-sector jobs, increasing more business profits and raising more tax dollars as the economy grows.

Human Scale v. Big, Scary Numbers

At DCReport, we try to make numbers human scale. That means we start with the big, scary and incomprehensible $3.5 trillion gross cost and divide by 10 because the money would be spent over a decade.

Next, we divide the $350 billion per year by 332.8 million Americans as of this writing. Then we divide that by 365 days to get $2.88 per day per American ($11.52 for the iconic family of four).

And how much is $2.88? It was less than the average price of a cup of coffee in 2019. Gourmet coffee shops that year charged on average $4.24 per cup.

Most Would Pay Nothing

Now the best news: That $2.88 per day won’t cost you a penny if you make less than $165,600, analysis by the Tax Policy Center shows. Years of experience have demonstrated that its computer model reliably forecasts the costs and benefits of tax policy changes.

Biden’s plan would reduce federal taxes for eight out of 10 households. The poorest 48 million households would pay $620 less in taxes. That means the poorest Americans would enjoy a 4% increase in their after-tax income. That’s the equivalent of two extra weeks of pay each year.

Families making $91,800 to $165,600 would pay on average $120 less in federal taxes. It’s not much, but also it’s not a tax increase.

Now consider people on the 80th to 89th rungs of the income ladder, people who make $165,600 to $243,000 in total income. Their taxes would go up, but by just $420 on average, less than half the price of a cup of coffee per day.

The Richest Pay

The burden for the Biden human infrastructure plan would fall overwhelmingly on the 120,000 highest income households in America, people whose annual income ranges from $3.6 million to several billion dollars annually.

The folks who make at least $100,000 per day would bear 86% of the cost of Biden’s human infrastructure plan. They were also the primary beneficiaries of the Trump 2017 tax cuts, repeating a quarter of the tax savings. This is more like a take back of a tax favor financed with borrowed money than a tax increase.

Yes, we have Americans whose annual incomes are in the billions of dollars. One example: Larry Ellison collects almost $1.8 billion a year in dividends from Oracle, the company he launched in 1977 with a federal government contract. And that’s far from all of Ellison’s income.

How the Richest Benefit

The top one in a thousand households would also reap huge benefits from the Biden human infrastructure plan, making them even wealthier over time.

The richest among us would benefit because America will be investing in a better educated, more productive workforce not burdened by student debt, which holds back the formation of families, home buying and all the spending that goes with furnishing and setting up a family domicile.

A more productive workforce with more after-tax income means most would have more money to spend on the goods and services offered by the wealthiest families and the businesses they invest in, own control. Voila, government policy that helps the many also makes the already rich richer while making the creation of new riches more likely.

How Most Americans Benefit

My life is an example of how taxpayer investments in citizens more than pay for themselves. The $8,960 that federal taxpayers invested in my college and postgraduate education over seven years under the War Orphans Educational Assistance Act has been paid back many times over in federal income taxes. Indeed, the inflation-adjusted value of that taxpayer investment in me was paid back in full just from taxes on royalties from Perfectly Legal, the first book in my award-winning trilogy on the American economy.

More broadly, one of the smartest if not the smartest federal investment ever was the GI Bill, officially the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944. The GI Bill is what enabled a Seattle grocer’s son named Bill Gates to become a lawyer and, in turn, give his son the money that launched Microsoft with jobs that poured money into federal coffers.

The GI Bill doubled the number of college degree holders in 10 years and resulted in more education, higher incomes, and less poverty. And this was despite the racist and sexist details of the GI Bill that kept many Black Americans and women who served from participating. The Biden plan has no such barriers, though once enacted, DCReport will scrutinize the final legislation looking for any subtle discriminatory features that Congress may slip in.

When Republicans and a handful of Democrats declare that they will vote against the American Families Plan, here is what they are really saying, you should:

• pay higher taxes
• not get as much in benefits as you could for those taxes
• pay higher prices for prescription drugs
• endure more medical bills
• have your pockets drained to pay for childcare and eldercare

Irrational Tax Hatred

And why? Because the ideological and irrational anti-tax crowd, which denounce all new taxes as bad, wants to ensure that the already best-off Americans can have more now instead of the more prosperous future we could all enjoy.

We would be a poor country today but for massive taxpayer investments in the future like the GI Bill and the related War Orphans Act. The way to think about human infrastructure is that it’s not spending, like lo those fossil fuels consumed by military planes and ships, but an investment in a better and all-around wealthier American future.

At a gross cost of $2.88 per day, the American Families Plan is a bargain. At a net cost of less than zero, only fools would say no.

DISCLAIMER: I looked up DCReport.org on MediaBiasFactCheck.com and found that overall, they rate it at “the end of left-center bias and High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing.”

A U.S. Economic Perspective

Heather’s recent newsletter addressed the current funding bill that would both keep the government from shutting down and prevent a default on the U.S. debt. The bill was passed by the House of Representatives — the vote being 220 to 211 (all Democrats voting in favor and all Republicans voting against). 

The following was submitted as a comment to Heather’s commentary and, IMO, needs to be read by anyone who is interested in the current U.S. economic situation. It was written by a CEO (Harbour Bridge Ventures) and, for me, clearly explains what this bill is all about. 

By sharing this person’s remarks, I’m hoping those who are FAR more knowledgeable about this subject than me will offer their thoughts and opinions. Do you agree with his perspective? Or does he have it all wrong? 

Remedial Economics 101 for Republicans

While I do not claim to know as much about Economics as Janet Yellin, I do have at least a moderate academic background in the subject thanks to an education that included studies in Economics and Finance. This does, however, leave me with the view that my knowledge in Economics and Finance far surpasses that of every Congressional Republican who collectively appears to know zip all. Here are a few points that even a relative economic dunce like me gets.

1. A raise in the debt ceiling is to cover spending already approved by Congress in the form of past budgets and already Congressional mandated spending. In fact, it is silly that we even have to go through the charade of approving a raise in the debt ceiling since objections to the spending should be over once budget bills are approved by Congress and the spending is then Congressionally mandated. Refusing to raise the debt ceiling is like denying responsibility for your credit card bill when received after already having incurred charges on the card. The real answer to this is that we should stop taking sham votes on raising the debt ceiling and just suspend it. The time to object to spending is before you actually make it, not when the bill comes due.

2. Let’s briefly discuss the idea that spending $3.5 trillion on human infrastructure and social spending is “too much.” So let’s start with the fact that yes, $3.5 trillion is a lot of money. But … compared to what? Compared to the $8 trillion added to the federal debt during the Tя☭mp administration? Hmmm, less than half of that and that was added in only 4 years, not over the 10 year spending period proposed in the Biden/Democratic proposal. In fact, retrospectively we now understand the Tя☭mp / Republican tax cut will wind up costing the U.S. $10 trillion (in lost revenue) over a similar 10 year period. About three times the amount proposed now by Democrats over 10 years.

OK, let’s put politics aside for a moment and stick to economics. The annual size of the U.S. economy at present is approximately $23 trillion. Over the coming 10 years, the total size of the U.S. economy (remember to account for anticipated growth, just based on trend lines now) is estimated at a total of $300 trillion. This means a 10 year spend of $3.5 trillion is just a little over 1% of the total anticipated size of the U.S. economy. Are we as a country willing to spend an additional 1% of our economy over the coming 10 years on improving conditions for working families, dealing with climate change perils, improving healthcare, and all the other components of the Democratic proposal?

Now let us also remember this is not only spending. The bill also raises revenues by an estimated $2.9 trillion. So the net additional spend is really only about $600 billion. This is even a much smaller proportion of our overall economy.

Now if we account for the fact that investments are expected to generate actual returns and apply the multiplier effect of social spending (by the way, social spending has a higher multiplier effect than any other government spending, unlike tax cuts which actually have a negative multiplier effect), it is possible we may actually see the investments generate more returns than their costs.

By any measure, as a country, we can certainly afford the $3.5 trillion over a 10 year period.

So, when you hear others say $3.5 trillion is too much or try to justify not raising the debt ceiling because we “have to live within our means,” now you will know just how ignorant they are on economics, finance, and government spending. Remember that when you decide who to vote for in 2022 and 2024.

More on Afghanistan

The following was a “comment” in response to Heather Cox Richardson’s latest newsletter (8/18/21).

It was written by Linda Mitchell, “a Professor of medieval history, feminist, ally and supporter of causes of right, equity, and justice.”

She addresses several issues that personally, I had not considered — primarily because, as a rule, I pay minimal attention to happenings in other countries until they become, as Afghanistan has done, “newsworthy.”

In any case, from what I’ve read so far in various news and “opinion” sources, I found Linda’s outlook spot-on.

1. The US military establishment lied and lied and lied when they talked about the combat readiness of the Afghan army. They have done so for 20 years. They even admitted that they lied a number of times when pressed. Their motive in lying was to present the military trainers as competent, when they were not. If this sounds familiar to those of us who lived through the Vietnam era, well, there you go.

2. There is not a single US administration that behaved proactively in Afghanistan. There has not been a single congressional “class” that has behaved proactively in Afghanistan. Plenty of academics–from historians to economists, to anthropologists, to sociologists–have been saying over the last 40 years that the West’s way of dealing with Afghanistan was going to fail and was wrongheaded from the start. But the last 20 years has also seen the dumbing down of the federal government, the glorification of ignorance and prejudice and jingoistic idiocy. So the people who actually had a clue were ignored or vilified. QED.

3. If the people of Afghanistan had cared about the pro-Western cultural institutions that western money propped up in their country–education and rights for women, a government elected through a democratic and transparent process, an economy based on capitalism–they would have embraced this idea beyond the few elites and the dedicated female teachers of girls and women. But they did not. Because Afghanistan is not a country. It is a delegation of provinces with intimate and historical ties to traditions we dismissed and ignored. We did not make them care about women and girls. THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT WOMEN AND GIRLS. The hollering going on now about “how do we save the women and girls” is laughable because the people who should have been asking those questions are the ones who embraced TFG’s jingoistic and autocratic foreign policy, who are determined to police women’s bodies and criminalize women’s bodily autonomy in the USA, who claim religious exceptionalism, who say NOTHING about the abuse of women and girls in their favorite countries, like Saudi Arabia, where al Qaeda came from. They are our Taliban: they just wear suits and talk about the “rights of the unborn,” and claim that their militant death-cult brand of Christianity is the “true” one. And they are winning here in the USA: take a look at the judicial decision to ban certain abortions in TX.

3. We had the chance to do the ONE THING that would have broken the economic back of the Taliban: stop the growing of opium poppies and the opium trade–the market for which is THE WEST–and replace it with well-constructed, carefully planned alternatives that the people in the south and west of the country (where poppies are grown) could manage THEMSELVES. We did not consult with the people whose lives were at risk if they did not grow opium. We did not ask them what THEY wanted to do, what THEY wanted to grow. We just went in and behaved like the boorish mo****f***ers we are and claimed to know better. We did not.

4. Why are all media outlets losing their s*** trying to blame SOMEONE for this horror show? Because they think it will help their ratings. Because as institutions the commercial media are all idiots and ignoramuses, led by suits who like their corporate bonuses no matter their political stripes. Because the last person in the room is the one they blame. Why don’t they instead do something useful, like re-animate the pages from the RNC website that praised TFG’s “brilliant and groundbreaking deal” with the Taliban? Which they scrubbed as soon as the debacle occurred.

I could go on but I won’t. Sorry for my rant of the day. I admit that I don’t understand why anyone is surprised by any of this.

As always, your reactions/opinions/disagreements are welcome — so long as you don’t go off-topic or become insulting of others’ viewpoints.