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The Smithian

@thesmithian-blog / thesmithian-blog.tumblr.com

culture is politics. politics is culture. [beta]
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The Affordable Care Act depends on richer people paying higher taxes to finance health insurance for lower-income people...

...Starting this year, a healthcare surtax of 3.8 percent is applied to capital gains and dividend income of individuals earning more than $200,000 and a nine-tenths of 1 percent healthcare tax to wages over $200,000 or couples over $250,000. Together, the two taxes will raise an estimated $317.7 billion over 10 years...the justification is plain: We are becoming a vastly unequal society in which most of the economic gains are going to the top. It’s only just that those with higher incomes bear some responsibility for maintaining the health of Americans who are less fortunate...This is a profoundly moral argument about who we are and what we owe each other as Americans. But Democrats have failed to make it...

more.

#taxes#affordable care act#obamacare#politics#health care#health insurance#inequality#society#economics#wealthy#poverty#morality#united states#democrats#robert reich
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if we get to Oct. 17 and the Repubs are still holding the nation hostage, the President has only one option: He must ignore the debt ceiling and order the Treasury to continue to pay all the nation’s bills. He should rely on Section four of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which says the 'validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law…shall not be questioned'...

Robert Reich, at Guernica

#republicans#united states#presiden obama#us treasury#fourteenth amendment#The Constitution#politics#robert reich
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I can’t help wondering why is it that Republicans who do want our governing institutions and processes to remain strong don’t stand up to the fanatics? What happened to Hatch and McCain, or to Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins, and Lindsay Graham? Are they so frightened of losing to a fanatic in the next primary that they’ve been silenced into submission? Why don’t former Republican senators who lost to the fanatics, such as Indiana’s Richard Lugar, speak up? As has been noted many times in history, it is not so much the viciousness or carelessness of the bad people but the silence of the good people that brings societies to the brink, or beyond.

Robert B. Reich, at Guernica

#republicans#politics#orrin hatch#John McCain#lamar alexander#susan collins#lindsay graham#elections#US Senate#richard lugar#indiana#history#robert reich#guernica
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Brace yourself. In coming weeks you’ll hear there’s no serious alternative to cutting Social Security and Medicare, raising taxes on middle class, and decimating what’s left of the federal government’s discretionary spending on everything from education and job training to highways and basic research. “We” must make these sacrifices, it will be said, in order to deal with our mushrooming budget deficit and cumulative debt. But most of the people who are making this argument are very wealthy or are sponsored by the very wealthy...

Robert Reich

#robert reich#social security#medicare#health care#taxes#middle class#federal government#education#jobs#infrastructure#politics#wealthy
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'This is for those of you who consider yourself to be progressive but have given up on politics because it seems rotten to the core. You may prefer Obama to Romney but don’t think there’s a huge difference between the two, so you may not even vote. Your cynicism is understandable. But cynicism is a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you succumb to it, the regressives who want to take this nation back to the 19th century win it all.' —Robert Reich
robertreich.org
#robert reich#united states#politics#voters#president obama#barack obama#mitt romney#elections#election 2012#progressives
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'...In economic terms, we will not "run out of money" next week. We're still the richest nation in the world, and the Federal Reserve has unlimited capacity to print money. Nor is there any economic imperative to reach an agreement on how to fix the budget deficit by Tuesday. It's not even clear the federal budget needs that much fixing anyway. Yes, the ratio of the national debt to the total economy is high relative to what it's been. But it's not nearly as high as it was after World War II—when it reached 120 percent of the economy's total output. If and when the economy begins to grow faster—if more Americans get jobs, and we move toward a full recovery—the debt/GDP ratio will fall, as it did in the 1950s, and as it does in every solid recovery. Revenues will pour into the Treasury, and much of the current "budget crisis" will be evaporate. Get it? We're really in a "jobs and growth" crisis—not a budget crisis.
tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com
#economics#economy#federal governement#jobs#politics#world war II#robert reich
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The federal budget is $3.8 trillion...The Republicans have just come up with their plan to cut the federal budget. They’ve found $32 billion of cuts...Their fiery campaign rhetoric, fierce determination, righteous indignation, and bloviated anger have summoned forth a hairball...What happened to John Boehner’s $100 billion budget-cutting commitment? What became of Paul Ryan’s big ideas? Where did all the roaring and raging on the right during the 2010 election go?

Robert Reich, from his "Why the Republican Budget Plan Is a Hairball"

#robert reich#republicans#elections#john boehner#politics#paul ryan#the right
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Hundreds of millions of secret dollars are pouring into congressional and state races in this election cycle. The Koch brothers (whose personal fortunes grew by $5 billion last year) appear to be behind some of it, Karl Rove has rounded up other multi-millionaires to fund right-wing candidates, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is funneling corporate dollars from around the world into congressional races, and Rupert Murdoch is evidently spending heavily…No one knows for sure where this flood of money is coming from because it's all secret…But you can safely assume its purpose is not to help America's stranded middle class, working class, and poor. It's to pad the nests of the rich, stop all reform, and deregulate big corporations and Wall Street—already more powerful than since the late 19th century…
tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com
#robert reich#congress#elections#karl rove#finance#politics#US Chamber of Commerce#middle class#wall street
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The underlying problem is structural, not cyclical. There will be no return to normal because normal got us into the hole in the first place. And the normal kind of prescriptions can't possibly get us out. Until the economy is restructured so more Americans share in its gains, the economy won't make many gains. We'll be forever trying to scale a wall that can't be, because the vast majority of Americans lack the purchasing power to move upward.

Robert Reich, from "The Tortoise Economy"

#robert reich#economy#quotations
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