19 May 2012

In The UK, "Austerity" Means Spending More Than The Socialists In Labour Did...And, Those Bastards Bankrupted The Country



Music to read by:




Talkin' to herself, there's no one else who needs to know... 
She tells herself, oh...
Memories back when she was bold and strong 
And waiting for the world to come along...

 

 

 

 

Cuts? WHAT cuts? Ignore the BBC and the Left, public spending is HIGHER than under Labour.

 

By Stephen Glover

Another week and another slew of hair-raising stories about the devastating effects of draconian cuts. The Government is reported to be considering a further round of reductions in welfare payments. The elderly and disabled are said to face savage cutbacks in their support.

Everywhere the story is the same. The extreme severity of the Coalition’s supposed cuts is accepted as universally and uncritically as are the laws of gravity. Most of the media and almost all politicians regard them as a fact of life.

The Labour leader Ed Miliband claims that ‘cutting too fast and too far’ is responsible for the ‘double-dip’ recession while a permanently angry Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor, talks of ‘a recession made in Downing Street’.


Hair-raising: the rhetoric of the Left suggests the Government has made savage cuts to public spending
Hair-raising: the rhetoric of the Left suggests the Government has made savage cuts to public spending


Day after day the BBC produces supposed examples of the damaging effects of cuts — never described as ‘savings’ — and in the Left-wing press, columnists such as The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee regularly blow gaskets and fulminate as they denigrate the Tory-led Coalition for destroying Britain’s public services.

And it’s not just Labour politicians, the BBC and the Left-wing press that tell us the Government is bleeding the country to death. The Coalition itself insists that public expenditure is falling. Ministers inform us that we must accept this painful medicine because of the crippling debts left by Labour. We have no choice but to endure the inescapable horrors of deficit reduction.

Academics tell the same story. Paul Krugman, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, recently agonised about the allegedly dire effects of the British Government’s decision to ‘slash expenditure’. David Blanchflower, a former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, pops up all over  the place with his apocalyptic warnings. 






If we were to ask a hundred people in any High Street, 99 or them would say there have been significant cuts. How could it be otherwise when the whole world is telling them so? Some might say the cuts are painful, but necessary. Others would opine they are painful and destructive. Either way, there is virtual unanimity that the Government is slashing public expenditure.

The trouble is that it isn’t. Earlier this week, the City bond trading firm Tullett Prebon produced a report that confirmed what some of us have been saying for months. To all intents and purposes, there hasn’t been any overall cut in public expenditure in the two years since the Coalition came to power.

Spending rose 0.3 per cent in the first year and fell by 1.5 per cent in the second. That makes a tiny overall decrease of just more than 1 per cent over two years. To put it another way, the supposedly ‘savage cuts’ delivered by the Government amount to only fractionally more than £1 in every £100. Most household budgets  have suffered far more  dramatic cutbacks.





Meanwhile, our national debt — what we owe as a nation — continues to soar. According to International Monetary Fund projections, it will increase faster over the next two years than any other leading European country apart from Spain. Proportionate to the size of our economy, our debt is one of the two or three highest in the developed world. When the Coalition took over, it stood at a stonking £1,002 billion. By the time of the next election, it will have risen to an unbelievable £1,613 billion.

Using figures produced by the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Tullett Prebon report shows that Government expenditure in 2011-12 was still £22.6 billion, or 3.4 per cent, higher than it was in 2008-09 after nearly a decade of bingeing by the Labour government. 

That’s how far we have got!

And while it is true that the deficit has been reduced — from £140 billion in the first year of the Coalition to £120 billion in the second — this has been achieved almost entirely as a result of higher taxes rather than cuts.

Many people may find these figures impossible to believe, but they are a matter of fact. Fourteen months ago, I wrote an essay in these pages referring to a brilliant pamphlet written by the economist Dr Tim Morgan for the Centre for Policy Studies. He had pointed out that after nearly a year the Coalition had not made any inroads into the vast mountain of public expenditure bequeathed by Labour.

But now almost exactly two years have passed since the Coalition assumed power and, incredibly, the picture has barely changed. The same Dr Morgan is the author of this week’s Tullett Prebon report. He describes ‘the tale of big cuts in public spending’ as ‘a bare-faced deception’.

The facts support his thesis. Office for Budget Responsibility figures show how much public expenditure is predicted to rise in cash terms — i.e. taking inflation into account — over the life of this Parliament. In 2010-11, it stood at £696 billion. It is projected to be £744 billion in 2015-16.





Dr Morgan calculates that in the remaining three years of the Parliament, public spending is projected to fall by only a further 2.4 per cent in real terms — i.e. discounting inflation. There are good reasons for doubting whether the Government will achieve even this very modest reduction.

How can this be? How can the whole world believe that there have been swingeing cuts when, at most, there will be a relatively gentle overall reduction that has only just begun? It is as though we are caught up, like some misguided cult, in a collective fantasy.

The reality is that, though there have so far been only trivial overall cuts, there have been significant savings in some departments. To put it another way, while there are some areas in which government spending is rising, there are others in which it is falling. In fact, the Coalition is borrowing almost as much over five years as Labour did over 13. Expenditure on the NHS — about 18 per cent of total government spending — will increase slightly in real terms, though you wouldn’t know it if you believed what Labour says. The smaller international aid budget is projected to climb by a third in real terms over the life of this Parliament.





Meanwhile, there are rising interest charges on the ever-growing national debt. Despite planned reforms, pension costs are expected to go up by 12 per cent in real terms in the five years to 2015, while the costs of unemployment benefit  seem likely to increase by more than the Government’s optimistic projections.

The Coalition is also anxious to protect other significant areas of expenditure, for example education, which will suffer only a relatively small cut over the life of this Parliament, increasing in cash terms from £89 billion to a projected £93 billion in 2015.

The upshot of all this is that the effects of a relatively trivial overall cut are being felt in a comparatively small number of departments such as Welfare and the Home Office, where the police budget is being sharply reduced. In other words, so many areas of government spending are protected or sacrosanct that the cuts fall on a limited segment of public expenditure.





Our Armed Forces have visibly suffered, with some men and women serving Queen and country in Afghanistan being given their P45s in the most shaming way almost as soon as they set foot on British soil. Squadrons of aircraft have been scrapped, and for several years, Britain won’t have a single aircraft carrier.

All of us will have noticed some effects of ‘cutbacks’ or ‘savings’. Tens of thousands of jobs in the public sector have already gone, though often through natural wastage. Local libraries have been needlessly and stupidly closed. Councils are even more reluctant than usual to repair the potholes in our roads.

But evidence of particular cuts, and of individual hardship, do not amount to proof that overall expenditure has been savagely reduced. It hasn’t been.
 
The reason so many people readily believe the ‘cuts lie’ is almost certainly because there has been an unprecedentedly tight squeeze on living standards as a result of higher taxes and falling or stagnating incomes, and rising inflation. Labour politicians have planted the idea that this unhappy state of affairs has been caused by slashing spending. On BBC1’s Question Time on Thursday, the former Labour Cabinet Minister Peter Hain complained of ‘relentless cuts’.

The Coalition talks up the supposed cuts for different reasons. It needs tens of billions of pounds to cover its enormous levels of borrowing. Dr Morgan plausibly suggests in his report that ‘the Government seems to believe it can con the bond markets using the smoke and mirrors of largely illusory austerity’.

The all-powerful BBC has contributed mightily to the general perception that there have been savage cuts. When did any of us hear a BBC presenter or economist say there have hardly been any overall cuts in public spending, or that the minor ones already planned will be mild in comparison to the much sharper austerity programmes being visited on Italy, Ireland, Spain and Greece?

By contrast, we hear almost daily about the allegedly awful effect of particular cuts, and are never told the whole truth, which is that very few inroads have yet been made into  the enormous maw of  public spending.

All of which begs the question: what would happen if the Coalition were forced to introduce substantial reductions in public spending? That, I believe, would be a truly disturbing scenario. For consider this. The lion’s share of the deficit reduction over the next few years is predicated not on cuts, but on higher tax receipts. These assume high levels of economic growth that many economists think are impossible.

Despite having often got their forecasts badly wrong before, George Osborne and the Office for Budget Responsibility are suggesting the economy will grow by a scarcely believable 0.8 per cent this year, 2 per cent next, 2.7 per cent in 2014 and 3 per cent in 2015.


Expectation: George Osborne postponed the cuts anticipating growth
Expectation: George Osborne postponed the cuts anticipating growth


These staggering figures are much more bullish than the OBR’s forecast for eurozone countries, and it is not at all clear why it and the Chancellor think we will do so much better. Lesser growth, or no growth at all, and unemployment (together with welfare benefits) will rise and tax receipts fall — and the deficit won’t come down. And our burgeoning national debt will increase still faster.

In that event, with an election looming, George Osborne will rue the fact that, in what may turn out to be a fatal miscalculation, he did not introduce significant cuts to public spending back in 2010, combined with tax cuts designed to stimulate the economy. This is the appalling irony of the Government’s position, with electors believing the country is suffering swingeing cuts. It is being bitterly criticised for doing something it has not done, and is enduring an enormous amount of pain for no obvious gain.

If growth does not happen, the Chancellor will have no choice but to introduce the kind of severe expenditure cuts he is wrongly accused of having already applied.

The eurozone crisis is threatening to drag us down. Despite David Cameron’s lecture on Thursday, we can’t do anything about the self-inflicted economic problems of Europe. This weekend’s discussions among G8 leaders in America are almost certainly irrelevant to our fortunes.

Mr Cameron had better concentrate on what the Government can do. It is still not too late for it to find new targeted public expenditure cuts — Britain’s bloated quangos and huge international aid bill are prime candidates — while giving our lacklustre economy a kick-start by cutting business taxes now.

He and George Osborne must grab complacent senior civil servants by the scruff of their necks and rid them of all the disastrous assumptions of the Gordon Brown years that still hold sway at the Treasury.

Doing nothing will almost certainly mean no growth — and then we will end up with public expenditure cuts dwarfing anything we have yet experienced. Imagine the uproar if the Government is forced to slash spending in the way it is being cut in Greece and Spain. The BBC, Labour Party, the Left-wing press and distinguished economists would go into orbit. The Coalition could not survive. The social disruption would be worse than it was in the Thirties.

We are a country that has worked itself into a highly nervous state over phantom cuts that have barely happened. Fasten your seat-belts and start praying if the axe really begins to fall.


How can "draconian spending cuts" that have yet to take place be responsible for Britain's double dip recession, but the tax rises -- like those advocated by Barack Obama and François Hollande -- that have been in effect not be responsible at all?




Related Reading:

  


Better Man - Pearl Jam

Waitin', watchin' the clock, it's four o'clock, it's got to stop
Tell him, take no more, she practices her speech
As he opens the door, she rolls over...
Pretends to sleep as he looks her over

She lies and says she's in love with him, can't find a better man...
She dreams in color, she dreams in red, can't find a better man...
Can't find a better man
Can't find a better man
Can't find a better man
Ohh...

Talkin' to herself, there's no one else who needs to know...
She tells herself, oh...
Memories back when she was bold and strong
And waiting for the world to come along...
Swears she knew it, now she swears he's gone

She lies and says she's in love with him, can't find a better man...
She dreams in color, she dreams in red, can't find a better man...
She lies and says she still loves him, can't find a better man...
She dreams in color, she dreams in red, can't find a better man...
Can't find a better man
Can't find a better man
Can't find a better man

She loved him, yeah... she don't want to leave this way
She feeds him, yeah... that's why she'll be back again

Can't find a better man
Can't find a better man
Can't find a better man
Can't find a better... man...

Here's A Secret: Austerity Does Work & Here's The Biggest Example Of It...Ever

Music to read by:

 

 

 Levon wears his war wound like a crown
He calls his child Jesus
'Cause he likes the name
And he sends him to the finest school in town

Levon, Levon likes his money

He makes a lot they say
Spend his days counting
In a garage by the motorway

He was born a pauper to a pawn on a Christmas day

When the New York Times said God is dead
And the war's begun
Alvin Tostig has a son today

 



By James Pethokoukis

Now, we all all know “austerity” from deep spending cuts (not the tax hikes, of course) is killing Europe’s economy and would do the same here in America, right?

Well, here’s a story about austerity that critics such as President Obama, Paul Krugman, and Ezra Klein never seem to mention: From 1944 to 1948, Uncle Sam cut spending by a whopping 75% as World War II came to end. Spending as a share of GDP plunged to 9% in 1948 from 44% in 1944.

Superstar economist and devout Keynesian Paul Samuelson—later to become the first American to win the Nobel Prize in economics—predicted such shock austerity would cause “the greatest period of unemployment and industrial dislocation which any economy has ever faced.” That dire, disastrous prediction was widely held by his fellow Keynesians, with one even predicting an “epidemic of violence.”

Except the doomsayers were wrong, even though Washington obviously ignored Samuelson’s call for gradual spending reductions. Despite cuts which dwarfed those seen in the EU today—not to mention those Republicans are calling for here at home—the U.S. economy thrived. There was no mass unemployment despite rapid demobilization of the armed forces. As George Mason University economist David Henderson explains is his 2010 paper, “The U.S. Postwar Miracle” (which this entire post draws upon):
As demobilization proceeded rapidly, employers in the private sector, full of the optimism … scooped up millions of the soldiers, sailors, and others who had been displaced from the armed forces and from military industries. … The number of unemployed people did increase, rising from 0.8 million to 2.3 million, but with a civilian labor force of 60.1 million, the 2.3 million unemployed people implied an unemployment rate of only 3.8 percent. As President Truman said, “This is probably close to the minimum unavoidable in a free economy of great mobility such as ours.
Of course, liberals are quick to point out the U.S. economy suffered its worst one-year downturn in history in 1946, a drop of 12%. To many Americans, it surely must have seemed like Samuelson was right, that the Great Depression had returned. But no one thought that back then, especially with jobs plentiful unlike during the 1930s. The drop in output was a statistical quirk caused by the removal of price controls. As Henderson explains:
For example, imagine that the free-market price of a pound of filet mignon during the war would have been $1.40 a pound. But imagine further that the government had set the price at $1.00 a pound. Then, when the price control was removed, the price would have shot to $1.40 a pound. Inflation statistics would have recorded some amount of inflation due to this large price increase. But those statistics would have overstated the real price increase because getting beef at $1.40 a pound is better for many of the people who couldn’t, because of the shortage, get it at $1.00 a pound.
Second, those sky-high output figures during the war measured government spending on goods and services, lots of it military hardware, at their cost. But what was all that stuff really worth, in purely economic terms, vs. post-war consumer purchases of homes and cars and nylon stockings? While total output fell by 12% in 1946, private-sector GDP rose by nearly 30%.

Or look at it this this way: Real U.S. output in 1947 was 17% higher than in 1941 despite the decline in government spending. Why was the economy prospering in way it never did during the Great Depression? Taxes were cut a little, and government interference—including price and production controls and rationing—was reduced a lot. But perhaps just as important, Truman dumped many of FDR’s most radical New Dealers. That change boosted business confidence, and companies started to invest again in America.

The typical Keynesian response mostly centers around dismissing the immediate post-war boom as a one-off event complicated by many unique factors. But it happened again, as Henderson notes! After the Cold War ended, overall federal spending fell to 18% of GDP in 2000 from 22% in 1991. But again the economy boomed. Real U.S. GDP grew by 40% with an average annual growth rate of 3.8%. Henderson speculates that perhaps the decline in defense spending freed up knowledge workers to help make technological miracles happen in the private economy.

The lesson here: Spending cuts might well produce prosperity instead of austerity, especially if accompanied by less government interference in the economy and less fear in the private sector of anti-market government policies.



Related Reading:

   



"Levon" - Elton John/Bernie Taupin

Levon wears his war wound like a crown
He calls his child Jesus
'Cause he likes the name
And he sends him to the finest school in town

Levon, Levon likes his money
He makes a lot they say
Spend his days counting
In a garage by the motorway

He was born a pauper to a pawn on a Christmas day
When the New York Times said God is dead
And the war's begun
Alvin Tostig has a son today

And he shall be Levon
And he shall be a good man
And he shall be Levon
In tradition with the family plan
And he shall be Levon
And he shall be a good man
He shall be Levon

Levon sells cartoon balloons in town
His family business thrives
Jesus blows up balloons all day
Sits on the porch swing watching them fly

And Jesus, he wants to go to Venus
Leaving Levon far behind
Take a balloon and go sailing
While Levon, Levon slowly dies 


Mr Obama, Build Up That Wall!



M2RB:  The Dave Matthews Band






Stay, beautiful baby
I hope you
Stay, American baby
American baby

Nobody's laughing now

God's grace lost and the devil is proud
But I've been walking for a thousand miles
One last time, I could see you smile

I hold on to you

You bring me hope, I'll see you soon
And if I don't see you
I'm afraid we've lost the way

Stay, beautiful baby

I hope you
Stay, American baby
American baby







By Andrew Klavan


In order to avoid throwing his money into the maw of an increasingly oppressive and spendthrift government, Facebook co-founder and about-to-be gazillionaire Eduardo Saverin has renounced his U.S. citizenship in favor of Singapore. To put an end to such sensible behavior, Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer and Bob Casey have proposed a punitive tax on any wealthy Americans who try to escape the clutches of Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer and Bob Casey by leaving the country.

But I have a much better idea, a much simpler and more effective idea. Why not just build a wall? Come on, this is a great, creative approach! How could it not work? We build a wall around the country and anyone trying to escape with his money or his brain power or his hard work, we capture him and bring him back. Or shoot him, if we have to.

This wonderful solution to the Saverin problem is not just perfect for the United States in general — it’d work in individual states as well.  Take California — please!  As City Journal’s Steven Malanga reports, businesses are leaving the golden state in droves.
As California has transformed into a relentlessly antibusiness state, [its] redeeming characteristics haven’t been enough to keep firms from leaving. Relocation experts say that the number of companies exiting the state for greener pastures has exploded. In surveys, executives regularly call California one of the country’s most toxic business environments and one of the least likely places to open or expand a new company. Many firms still headquartered in California have forsaken expansion there.
This shouldn’t be. Not when the answer is right there in front of us! Just build a wall along the border of the state and anyone who tries to get out gets the old bang-bang-you’re-dead treatment!

I mean, the Communists did this in Berlin, right? That worked well! Did you think the reds just slapped that sucker up because they were evil? Did you think they just did it for the joy of shooting their own citizens? Of course not. The Communists were smart people, logical people. They knew that when the state encroached on human freedom by taking the fruit of people’s labor, by demanding power over people’s productivity and creativity, those people would naturally, sensibly come to understand that the contract between citizen and state had been violated, and they’d take off. And you just can’t have a socialist state if all the creativity and productivity and other people’s money leave.  So the Communists built a wall. 

It made perfect sense.

And so we should build a wall! And keep job-and-wealth-creating people like Eduardo Saverin from leaving! What other solution could there possibly be? I mean, if smart guys like Senators Schumer and Casey can’t think of one, I sure can’t.

So this is the country you made, President Obama — and in only three short years too. So don’t you wait. Don’t hesitate. Don’t bother with punitive taxes or big speeches or any of that stuff.

Mr. Obama, finish the job! Make this the America you want it to be.

Mr. Obama, build up that wall!


 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Sophie:

"I will merely note that for some people, their citizenship is worth everything they have to give."
- David French, The Corner, National Review


Nice words, but is that really true? Doesn’t your country owe you something in return? Were Germans, who opposed the Nazis, wrong for immigrating to the US and becoming citizens? Were Russians, who left the Soviet Union, wrong for defecting, renouncing their citizenship and becoming Americans? 

If the Federal government decided to impose a 90% income tax on everyone, would you still believe that your citizenship is worth 9 out of every $10 you earn? Really? What else would you give at that point? Your wife, if El Presidente demanded her? Your firstborn son?  Would you begin to kill your neighbours if your country demanded that of you?  Better yet, were the Founding Fathers wrong for declaring their independence from England because of high taxation, taxation without representation, and the tyranny of King George III?  Were they unpatriotic?

No, Saverin and people like him are renouncing their citizenship because being an American doesn’t have the same value as it did as little as a decade ago when I became one. The country has the most progressive income tax system in the world; yet, the 50% of the populace, who does not pay a dime in Federal income taxes, believes it is entitled by right to the property of others. The dollar is on its way to being as valuable as an old Reichsmark. The national debt will enslave generations. Neither party is capable of or willing to address the real issues.

In addition to the most progressive income tax system, we also have the highest corporate tax rate and are increasing dividend and capital gain tax rates while expanding economies are cutting them. Further, the bureaucratic tangle of red tape answers the question “Where are the jobs?” They are overseas because the US government has created a hostile environment to job and business creation. It isn’t at the stage of Greece — where a stool sample is required of some people before they can obtain an operating licence to start an internet business — but it is rapidly following in the country’s footsteps.

The question shouldn’t be whether Saverin is a bad guy for renouncing his American citizenship. The question should be "Why has the US decided that it doesn’t want to keep people like Saverin and attract more of them?" Obviously, it doesn't want Saverins. If it did, it would make itself competitive.

Senators Schumer and Casey, among others, claim that people like Saverin are unpatriotic and they are probably correct, but how patriotic are they?  Is it patriotic to debaunch the currency of your country?  Is it patriotic to spend your country into bankruptcy?  Is it patriotic -- and moral -- to enslave future generations to unsustainable debt obligations?  Is it fair, patriotic, or moral to steal the futures of generations yet unborn while taxing them without representation?

Would Americans be unpatriotic if they wanted to insure that their children were not enslaved by the debt and unfunded obligations of their forebears by raising them as citizens of another country?  Is that really selfish?  How much do your future children and grandchildren owe the greedy, irresponsible people of today?

When I tell the Progressive Movement to "Fund Your Utopia Without Me™", I mean it.  If the Progs want to recreate the French Revolution -- with or without the blood -- and they manage to be successful, in whole or in part, why do I owe the country anything?  Why do you?  Must we stay around and pay...and pay...and pay...and pay to satiate the envious cravings and most base desires of humanity?

California has 1/8th of the country's population, but 1/3rd of all of the country's welfare recipients.  Is it doing anything to attract new business or relocations?  No.  It continues to pass higher taxes, fees, and more regulation, while giving more to union workers and welfare recipients.  Businesses and the productive class are leaving.  Why would anyone think that this would not happen on a national scale should Obama succeed in turning all of America into California?

Great civilisations do fall.  Hopefully, the United States will not, but if it does, you do not have to go down with the ship.


BTW:  I can't wait to hear the hypocritical screeching from Senator John Kerry, who parked his boat in another state to avoid paying Massachusetts state taxes.


American Baby by Dave Matthews Band


If these walls came crumblin' down
Fell so hard, to make us lose our faith
From what's left you'd figure it out
Still make lemonade taste like a summer day

Stay, beautiful baby
I hope you
Stay, American baby
American baby

Nobody's laughing now
God's grace lost and the devil is proud
But I've been walking for a thousand miles
One last time, I could see you smile

I (I) hold (hold) on (on) to you
You bring me hope, I'll see you soon
And if I don't see you
I'm afraid we've lost the way

Stay, beautiful baby
I hope you
Stay, American baby
American baby

I (I) hold (hold) on (on) to you
You lift me up and always will
I see you in life
Hope I don't get left behind

I (I) hold (hold) on (on) to you
You bring me hope, I'll see you soon
And if I don't see you
I'm afraid we've lost the way

Stay, beautiful baby
I hope you
Stay, American baby
I hope you
Stay, beautiful baby
I hope you
Stay, American baby
American baby 



Democratic Party to White, Working Class Voters: Drop Dead.



Music to read by:






One last kiss, one only, then I let you go
Heart for you, heart fallen, but you can't break my fall

I'm broken, don't break me, when I hit the ground

Some devil, some angel has got me to the bone



You said, always and forever

Now I believe you baby

You said, always and forever is such a long and lonely time

 






By Mickey Kaus 

So it’s unanimous, then– Thomas Edsall was right: In the aftermath of Obama’s gay marriage flip, pundits seem to have concluded that Obama’s Democratic party has indeed given up on white working class voters. They’ve been dropped from the winning coalition, which is now composed of three main groups: “young people, college-educated whites (especially women), and minorities,” according to Ron Brownstein. Bill Galston agrees. Ruy Teixeira–who once wrote a book called America’s Forgotten Majority: Why the White Working Class Still Matters–agrees. Here’s Teixeira on how Obama can win Arizona:

"First, the share of Hispanic voters must grow and their support level for Obama must increase …

Second, a projected 3 point decrease in the size of the total white vote should come entirely from white working class voters. Based on recent data, this is a highly plausible assumption. Eligible voter trends since 2008 are consistent with such an outcome and, in 2008, the decrease in the white vote (4 points) did in fact come entirely from working class voters, according to the exit polls.

Finally, Obama’s performance among white college graduates needs to improve …. Returning to [2000 and 2004] earlier levels of white college graduate support will be crucial for Obama. [E.A.]"

Hmm. Are there any other Dems out there who think basing the party on this New
Coke
Coalition is a really bad idea? Here’s alert kf reader Pollster Y:

For now, it’s not even an argument. This is the direction the smart people are taking the Democratic Party. Wheeeee! …

A college-educated whites plus blacks and Hispanics coalition is not the cruise I signed up for—and for many blacks and Hispanics, the door they came in was marked “for low- to middle-income working folks of all races,” and they will understand immediately that the old working class door is closed now and they are just votes to support the ascendancy of a college-educated whites agenda. Steerage class. …

[W]hich holds greater promise in the Electoral College—winning more vote in Denver, Phoenix, Santa Fe, Columbus, OH and the suburbs of Washington DC with a college-whites+minorities focus, OR trying to win back the arc of votes Obama lost to Hillary and has not won back, stretching from WVA, VA south of the Northern Virginia suburbs, western NC, southwestern PA, southern OH, southern IL, MO, Arkansas? And in the long run, which Democratic Party is more likely to hold the loyalties of blacks and Hispanics for another generation—a working class Democratic Party, or a knowledge-worker Democratic Party?

Let me add a few other possible reasons to take Pollster Y’s doubts seriously:

1. Unskilled workers–men especially–are among those who’ve been most harmed by the big structural changes of the past four decades (i.e., global trade that forces them to compete against cheap foreign workers, technology that puts a premium on skills and smarts). Any political party that doesn’t attempt to improve the economic position of these people–who make up a lot of the “white working class”–simply isn’t addressing the problems of the times.

2. The increasing premium on skills and smarts promises to bring us an uglier society in the form of a meritocracy where those who are rich can think not only that they’re richer but that they’re better. That doesn’t simply threaten the incomes of the unskilled. It corrodes the traditional American idea of social equality–the idea that we’re “equal in the eyes of each other.” Cheering on young professionals–while urging the non-professionals to hurry up and do some learnin’–doesn’t make the problem better. It makes the problem worse. Even if it increases GDP.

3. Weren’t Democrats supposed to be the party of Everyman? If you went to work and obeyed the rules, Dems would “make work pay”–plus give you unemployment compensation and Social Security and medical care in old age. White male workers are sort of the indivisible denominator in American politics–they have no special economic leverage, and no race- or gender-based claim to special privileges. They’re naked as far as favoritism goes, and thus (not unlike Marx’s proleteriat) are the representatives of universal privileges (such as Social Security). The new Obama coalition threatens to abandon this universality, becoming instead the party of non-universal skills, ethnic and gender identities–of special pleaders, victims and causists. Not of citizens.


P.S.: But isn’t this just a question of strategy or political marketing? No. Different coalitions produce different policies–or, rather, the attempt to mobilize different coalitions produces different policies. (Sorry, Weigel.**) Gay marriage is a New Coalition policy: Young voters love it; white working class voters, not so much. “Comprehensive immigration reform”–e.g. legalization or amnesty– is a New Coalition policy: It is quite explicitly framed as an attempt to win over Latinos. But if it attracts additional unskilled illegal immigrants, from Mexico and elsewhere, unskilled working class Americans are the ones who will see their wages bid down even further. Screw ‘em–they vote Republican anyway!

Similarly, if you don’t care that much about ordinary white unskilled workers you might be perfectly willing to raise the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67, as Obama has apparently been willing to do. After all, it”s not such a big deal to retire two years later if you are an accountant. But what if you are a coal miner? The worst example of all would be Obama policies that push poorer workers out of Medicare into often-inferior Medicaid, as Scott Gottlieb has charged the Affordable Care Act will do. (I await Jonathan Cohn’s explanation of why Obamacare doesn’t actually do this).

You can’t blame Obama for trying to win, and if white working class voters don’t like him–well, he has to assemble a majority anyway he can.*** But if you’re not Obama you can hope this particular Emerging Democratic Majority un-emerges soon.
_____

**–Back in November, Slate‘s Dave Weigel assured his readers that “Obama isn’t switching policies in or out of a playbook because whites won’t vote for him.” Tell it to opponents of gay marriage.

***–You can blame Obama for not doing things that might have made white working class voters dislike him a lot less–doing a better job of selling Obamacare, for example. A big initiative to get the fat out of the federal bureaucracy might have done for him what welfare reform did for Bill Clinton. (For that matter, welfare reform might have done for him what welfare reform did for Bill Clinton–specifically, backing up work requirements with Wisconsin-style last-resort “workfare” jobs.)





Some Devil by David Matthews Band

One last kiss one only
Then I'll let you go
Hard for you I've fallen
But you can't break my fall
I'm broken don't break me
When I hit the ground

Some devil some angel
Has got me to the bones
You said always and forever
Now I believe you baby
You said always and forever
Is such a long and lonely time

Too drunk and still drinking
It's just the way I feel
It's alright
Is what you told me
Cause what we had was so beautiful
Feel heavy like floating
At the bottom of the sea

You said always and forever
Now I believe you baby
You said always and forever
Is such a long and lonely time

Some devil is stuck inside of me
I cannot set it free
I wish, I wish I was dead and you were grieving
Just so that you could know
Some angel is stuck inside of me
But I cannot set you free

You said always and forever
Now I believe you baby
You said always and forever
Such a long and lonely time

Stuck inside of me