David Bonior Is A Socialist And Running Obama’s Economic Show

Meet the Press depressed me more than usual today. A round-table of talking heads from Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal to David Bonior, Obama’s economic policy chief adviser sat around discussing the economy. Of course, the news is dire. Of course, Something Must Be Done.

David Bonior, though gave me the most reason to want to cry in my beer. He seems intent on bringing to America the destruction he wrought in Michigan. This is from this morning’s transcript:

David Bonior: Well, from my perspective we’ve got to get a hold of this inequality we have in this country today on, on wages and income, and this Bush tax cut piece is a, is a big part of that. The top–over the last 20 years, the top 10 percent took 90 percent of the income gains in this–in the country. And the top 1 percent took roughly 60 percent. And the top 1/10th of 1 percent took 35 percent of that. I mean, it’s skewed the wrong way. And what we need to do is focus in on not only monetary policy and fiscal policy, as we have talked this morning, but we’ve also got to talk about where we want to end up.

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

REP. BONIOR: And the way we end up with helping actually people is to give them the chance to bargain collectively at the table. With 7 percent unionization in this country, you’re not going to get the dispersion that you need. We were successful in this country–after the second World War, the three most profitable decades for working people. Shared prosperity occurred after the second World War because unionization was at 35 percent. The Employee Free Choice Act is an important piece of legislation that President-elect Obama and Biden support, the Congress support, 60 percent of the American people support, and that will help share in the benefits and the bounties of the country.

[Emphasis added.]

I would like to address a couple things. The reasons that the top percent get the biggest tax breaks is because they are the ones paying taxes. See the chart here. The article is also illuminating. The rich pay the most taxes but they also pay MORE proportionally when it comes to federal income tax.

What about American’s standard of living? Do average Americans suffer more now than during our parents or grandparents time? All this talk of recession-depression seems to belied by the evidence around us. Why is it that “poor” people talk on iPhones and play the game du jour with their Wii’s, XBoxes, etc. on their flat screens? Why is everyone fat? Shouldn’t everyone be skinny and lining up at soup kitchens? Maybe American’s aren’t doing worse. From American.com:

Income and wages are often used as gauges of progress, but consumption is the best measure of rising living standards. Products that began as luxuries only the rich could afford in time came within the means of just about all U.S. households (Fig. 1). In previous generations, telephones, cars, electricity, household appliances, and televisions made life better for the average American. In our times it has been computers, cell phones, Internet access, VCR/ DVD players, digital cameras, and more.

All segments of society have shared in the material progress. Over the past two decades, ownership of cars, color televisions, and household appliances has risen among poor households (Fig. 2). A quarter of poor households have computers. Two in five own their homes. For many goods, ownership rates are higher for today’s poor households than for the general population of the early 1970s.

And that’s what you see, right? You see even low-income families enjoying things I don’t remember having as a middle class kid, myself.

Still, the economy has slowed. Many people who could not afford homes or second homes, got in over their heads and are facing bankruptcy and loss of homes. That is a cause-effect consequence of living beyond one’s means. Many banks gave bad loans and fear for their own solvency. They lived on cheap credit themselves, hoping to make money in trading but not in sound investment. That is a cause-effect consequence of being greedy. Government bureaucracies are running out of cash for their pension funds and employees because they are over-generous and invested poorly, never considering that tax receipts would ever slow. This is a consequence of being fiscally irresponsible and short-sighted.

And now, David Bonior and Barack Obama want to further George Bush’s push toward socialism by rewarding all this bad behavior. Furthermore, they want to increase the size of government, the dependence on government and redistribute wealth. They want to make America “fairer”. This means that more government jobs, more unionization which will make American companies less competitive, and more rules and regulations that will force employers to shrink workforces to pay more for less work–especially on green projects that may or may not, as Paul Gigot pointed out be economically feasible. That is, these green initiatives are experiments. The government wants to create products people may or may not want to buy. So what if no one buys what they’re selling?

So, who will pay for all this? Any working American will. And our children will. More government spending rewards bad behavior.

People might be tightening belts and holding on (no one is investing in anything right now for fear of what Congress and the new President will do–who is going to hire? who is going to innovate? who is going to take a risk on a big capital investment?) but this is NOT the Great Depression. They hysteria of the likes of David Bonior and some of the other guests on Meet the Press today would be laughable if they didn’t have so much power to do damage.

And David Bonior of all people? It’s like picking the Captain of the Titanic to run the Navy. America is in real trouble and it’s not from the economic downturn, it’s from those who would deign to solve it.

UPDATED:

The Great Credit Hoax:

At no time during that interval, however, did the amount of commercial-bank credit outstanding fall below the amount outstanding at the beginning of the year. In short, credit was actually ample, indeed, at an all-time high; it simply stopped growing as usual for six months, stuck at about $9.4 trillion, while one Wall Street wizard after another told NPR that “no money is moving, the credit market is completely shut down” or some such cock-and-bull story.

After the six-month pause, commercial-bank credit zipped upward again, so that by the end of the year, the amount outstanding stood more than 8 percent higher than it had a year earlier. Some credit crunch! Année terrible, indeed.

But don’t write off this silly little hoax too fast, because, however baseless it might have been in economic reality, it was manifestly good enough for government work. And that work has now placed US taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars of additional Treasury commitments and put all holders of US dollars and other dollar-denominated assets at risk of tremendous losses of their money’s purchasing power.

More from The One, himself.

Finally, you must go read this post from High Plains Blogger. Here’s his conclusion:

So am I surprised that unemployment has risen? Hardly. The American people voted to raise unemployment. And taxes on the middle class. And burden us with more government regulations. And trade some of our freedoms for a sense of security (what’s that Ben Franklin quote?). I suppose we’ll all just blame Bush.

I’ve written about this before. Again and again, actually. When taxes go up and business slows, employers (especially small businesses) cut costs first, then they stop hiring, then they stop expanding, then they start freezing, then they start laying off. Finally, they fire. My single most expensive piece of overhead is employee wages and benefits. Letting employees go is excruciating and the last thing an employer wants to do. It is painful and difficult and agonizing.

Barack Obama’s government wants to trade private sector jobs for “public works” jobs. It will cost the economy.

Posted in Entertain Me • Political Animals
Tags: America • Democrats • Economy • MSM • Politics