Middle Class?Follow

Oh ho, a surprising revelation.

Perhaps I'm too young to remember, but hasn't this always been the case for both parties?

Spending on infrastructure is spending for the middle class and small business. Large businesses could hypothetically afford their own infrastructure; and actually (indirectly) purchase it in places like China. Below a certain size and the benefits of infrastructure can only really be effective if handled by a larger body. The tax policy being weighted less favorably towards larger entities makes them less able to unfairly compete with smaller businesses. There is still a huge influence gap, but less so. Infrastructure expenditures are more useful for small biz/middle class than most social programs, (barring subsidized Small-midsize business loans) since there is generally a higher percentage of working class citizens, and they use many of those social programs to a greater degree. Tax reform and electoral reform (Not that significant electoral reform is anything more than pie in the sky, currently) also would aid middle class citizens as they do not have the resources to dig through the legal codes to develop strategies to abuse said codes.

This is a short answer, could be much longer, but you get the gist of the argument.

I agree. I've just noticed a marked shift from "rich vs poor" to "rich vs middle class" over the last year. I think I first noticed this when Obama (I think it was him?) made a speech about the looming tax rates expiring, and made it about raising taxes on the rich, or raising them on the middle class. I noticed it again with criticism of the Ryan budget, where liberals projected a shortfall from said budget and then assumed it would be made up by increased taxes on the middle class (completely invented that btw), and then argued that Ryan's plan would "cut taxes for the rich, while raising them for the middle class". I thought that was a huge stretch at the time, but now it appears like this has been a growing strategy all along.



/shrug

I think we had this argument on this forum a few weeks ago. Who gets to decide that your gain is at the "expense of everyone else"? Isn't that arbitrary? As I pointed out then, the proposed taxes target every dollar earned over $250k. So not just those who earned it at the expense of everyone else, but everyone who earns that much. That sure looks like an attack on personal wealth to me. Unless you can shed a bit more light on the logic here. Cause I'm not seeing it.


It just looks like a bunch of talk that doesn't match the walk the Dems are doing one bit.

"By definition" the middle class typically relies on public education (government funded), various government housing programs/subsidies (Freddie/Fannie Mac, mortgage tax credit), rely on employee funded health care and feel little ability to change that into a different policy, rely on the child care credits for their taxes, Pell grants and student loans for college, etc. The middle class is acutely aware that cuts to unemployment security and food programs could easily affect them in the future should they lose their jobs. I think many in the middle class aren't especially opposed to strong safety nets for the lower class because they actually know and work with people either in the lower class or on the cusp. In short, I don't think you have any real idea what it means to be middle class these days.

Now, I don't believe for a second that you're "curious" rather than looking for a debate so I'll leave it at that.

We're middle class. We got an $8,000 tax rebate from the government as encouragement to buy a house back during the nastier parts of the recession. I don't think that would have happened under a McCain presidency.

The thing is, we're not quite so far up the middle class ladder at this point that we can't see the lower rungs or remember them. In fact, we can still see the ground below us, although it's slowly getting further away.

I wouldn't say "relies on them", but they do gain some benefit from these. But here's the "talk the talk versus walk the walk" part: How much of those things have Democrats made better via their federal economic policies over the last 4 years? I mean, public education is funded 90% by states and local governments. Housing assistance only minimally benefits the middle class (assuming we're talking about people over say $50k/year and that might even be low). Dems want to eliminate the mortgage tax credit. Employee funded health care is funded by their employees, not the government. If anything, those who already had that are now facing greater health care costs because of Obama care (someone has to pay more to cover all those new people who wont be paying much or anything, right?). Child care credits? Not really anything the Dems have touched, have they? Student loans? Again, not really being touched, except for a movement to forgive loans for those who don't make enough money to pay them back (which means, not people in the middle class). Again, someone's going to have to make up that difference, so it'll be those in the middle class paying more for their loans in order to cover for those who borrowed money but couldn't pay it back.

Not seeing how the Dems are good out of that list. How about instead of just listing off stuff, you maybe explain how Dems are good for the middle class with regard to them? That's part of my point I think. It seems like the Dems like to do what you just did, rattle off a bunch of stuff that they claim helps the middle class, but when you actually stop and look at them closely, they really don't help the middle class at all.

This would be a bit less obvious, if the things they list aren't exactly the same things they've been listing as helping the poor for decades now. I get how student loan forgiveness helps the poor. I get how child tax credits do. And housing assistance, and most of that stuff. It's the shift of listing that stuff when supporting their position of "we're good for the poor", to "we're good for the middle class". I mean, they didn't even change the list. They just changed the group they claim it helps. And they did this without seeming to bother to make the case to support that argument. They just say it. And they say it a lot. Over and over and over.


Which is why I brought up the topic. It seems a bit disjointed to me. Clearly, the same policies that are good for the poor can't also be good for the middle class, right?



No. They're acutely aware that the spending on those things makes it more likely that they'll lose their jobs and thus end out needing them. Um... And at the risk of pointing out the obvious. They wont be middle class anymore. So what you're saying is that it helps the middle class to create policies designed to help them if/when they aren't middle class anymore. Why not actually make it easier for people to get into and stay in the middle class in the first place? I think people would much rather have a good paying job than a safety net for if they lose it.



If those strong safety nets come at a cost that increases the number of people needing them, I think they are. When someone in the middle class has a friend who's poor or working class, you know what they want? Not bigger government programs to help their friends out. They want their friends to get a good paying job. That's the way to help people.

IMO people in the middle class are acutely aware that what differentiates them from someone who is poor is the job they hold. That's it. So the way to protect their own positions and to help others achieve it as well, is to support policies that create jobs, not policies that help people who don't have them. That's how one becomes middle class. And no amount of government assistance will do that.



What? It can't be both?

Sure. But what makes it a "class" is that those within it have the ability to obtain those things themselves (within the larger economic environment of course). If the government gives someone free health care, it does not make that person middle class. Similarly, providing people with free education, housing, etc does not make one middle class. It's the ability to provide it for yourself that makes you middle class.

What the Dems are doing is providing the "things" that middle class normally provides to those who may not be able to afford them. But that means that those who can afford them now will have to pay more for them to make up the difference. Someone has to pay. Thus, the Dems hurt the middle class.



Wrong. The only way to help the actual middle class is to create an economic environment in which more people can obtain jobs that pay enough money for people to afford those things themselves. Simply handing them to them doesn't make them middle class. It destroys the middle class.



The GOPs position is that the government should not be in the business of "assisting in these arenas" in the first place. You're mistaking the effect for the cause Joph. When people have those things because they can afford them themselves, they are middle class. When you just give them to people, you don't make them middle class, and you likely hurt the actual middle class in the process. The GOP wants to grow the actual middle class. The Dems want to hand the rewards that the middle class has earned to everyone, thus eliminating the middle class.

It's a language change. The Dems policies help the poor. That's been their argument for 50+ years. But it seems like just this year, they've redefined middle class to mean poor, and just use that phrase in the same place in the same arguments. Which is a bit strange.

I'm telling you what I think about how the middle class views things. You're free to posit your own ideas. But how about instead of rattling off a list of things, just pick one item and explain in clear language how say a family earning a combined $70k/year, with a home, a mortgage, existing health care from their employer(s), kids in school, soccer practice, scouts, braces, etc is benefited by the Dems actions with regard to that thing. It's easy to just say Dems do X, Y, and Z and those things are good for the middle class. Hell. All I need to do is tune into the DNC and I'll hear that song and dance repeated 8 times an hour.


My question is why people think those things help the middle class? Do they really? Or are the Dems just replacing "poor" with "middle class" in their talking points and hoping no one will notice?

Given that I'm voting for a government and not some hypothetical charity...

Why? I mean I get why it might be hard for you to fathom, but I think most people don't have that problem. Let's see: Too much spending, slowing economic recovery has created a host of negative effects that I have seen first hand. Businesses trimming benefits, cutting expenses. Hell. They're even talking about requiring staff level engineers to share offices. WTF? More temps and less full time. I can directly see the impact of the Dems policies, and they're pretty much all bad. Business is managing right now, but only just barely. On paper they're doing ok, but at some point they'll run out of relatively harmless things to cut and then things will get bad. Unless policies change that is.

Green energy spending hasn't benefited me. Obamacare isn't going to benefit me at all, and will likely result in some combination of reduced benefits and higher costs for me. I'm honestly having a hard time seeing a single thing in terms of economic polices that have benefited me.




Sure. Wrong. But sure. The value of my home has decreased in the last 4 years (as have most property values). It's still higher than when I bought it back in 2002, but it's probably lost about $50k or so in value since 2007.

Now if we're talking about stocks and mutual funds, my net worth has gone up some. But I've argued all along that the markets are doing ok (more or less). The problem with this recovery is that it hasn't trickled down to the employment level yet (or enough). We peaked at just over 10% unemployment in late 2010 and should have rapidly dropped to below 6% within a year after that point. But instead we drifted downward, then stopped and have been lingering at just over 8% for a year now.

And that's... drumroll please... bad for the middle class. It means that there are fewer people in the middle class, and if someone loses their job, it'll be harder for them to get a new one as good as what they had. The combined wealth in the middle class is evaporating as a result of the Obama agenda far far faster than any wealth is taken from "the rich". I guess that why I find it so surprising that they're making this claim (as well as dam arrogant IMO). The Dems have been absolutely terrible to the middle class, and I doubt that most of them are as blinded to this fact as Joph appears to be.


EDIT: Oh. I'm honestly curious (and forgot to ask). What on earth made you think that property values have been in any way buoyed by Democrat economic policies (much less "massively buoyed")?

Edited, Sep 5th 2012 8:07pm by gbaji

Oh. I'm honestly curious (and forgot to ask). What on earth made you think that property values have been in any way buoyed by Democrat economic policies (much less "massively buoyed")?

I don't think it's arguable, really, or a point of contention anywhere, but I'm not going to bother with a debate that starts with you at a point of complete ignorance "suspecting" that data is invalid. The fed holding interest rates at effectively zero and 30 mortgages being at 3.5 or whatever they are at the moment allows someone to buy your house for more than if those rates were tied to, oh I don't know, GOLD or whatever it is you idiots propose most recently would solve the problem of "printing money".

Here's a press release though, you can print it out and argue with it. Or **** on it or whatever saves the world the exquisite torture of you posting about economics.

http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/documents/huddoc?id=junenat2012_scfinal.pdf

Economics is his strong suit.