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Religious Dick

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Brooms and Shovels
« on: November 25, 2012, 03:41:21 PM »
Brooms and Shovels
by John Derbyshire

November 15, 2012

It is traditionally said that after the Lord Mayor?s Parade come the guys with brooms and shovels to clear the pavement of whatever the parade horses may have bestowed upon it. Well, the election?s over, and here I come with broom and shovel to see if there?s anything instructive to be found in the droppings.

In a pre-election piece I opined that I couldn?t see much daylight between the two parties. Three weeks later, in an election-night piece, I confessed to having voted anyway, for Mitt Romney and everyone else on the conservative/Republican line, on account of my kids?one pushing, one pulling.

On the matter of there being little to choose between the parties, I didn?t just have a hold of the zeitgeist by his coattails, I was well-nigh tandem-jump skydiving with the old ghoul.

This won?t improve. It?s been the unanimous opinion of the post-election commentators that what the GOP must now do is make itself more like the Democrats. Women and minorities on the ticket! Shut up about abortion, gay marriage, and Jesus! Comprehensive immigration reform! Keep the millionaires out of sight!

It wasn?t hard to spot this trend. In the nation of my birth, it?s been going on for decades. Fifty years ago the Labour Party, though trending fast toward managerialism, still featured fiery Marxist agitators with an Order of Lenin in the dining-room dresser, longhaired scholarly misfits from magazines printed on low-grade paper, and horny-handed sons of toil from outfits such as the Boilermakers Union.

One scholarly misfit scandalized respectable British opinion as late as 1981 by wearing a duffle coat to the Veterans? Day wreath-laying ceremony. And it was one of those horny-handed sons of toil, I forget from which union, who in respect of some rumored scandal among the brothers declared from the podium of the Trades Union Congress that ?I?ve heard these allegations, and I know who the alligators are.??

The Tories, meanwhile, were still recognizably the toffs? party; not so much the highest of the high toffs?mid-20th-century Tories, though patriotic and monarchist, always thought the Windsors were politically?unsound?as the business classes and the country squirearchy. Farmers were Tory, your local realtor was a Tory, and the board of Imperial Chemical Industries was all Tories.

You had something to get your teeth into there. Either you wanted to stand atop the ruins of Buckingham Palace waving the red flag, or else you were of the same kidney as Tory poet Philip Larkin, who sketched out his political program thusly in a letter to fellow curmudgeon Kingsley Amis:

Prison for strikers,
Bring back the cat,
Kick out the niggers,
How about that?

Nowadays, after the brief Thatcherite interlude (sigh), Labourites and Tories are indistinguishable: sleek young metrosexuals in thousand-dollar suits whose thoughts stray not one millimeter from the dogmas of the New Universal Faith?globalism, feminism, multiculturalism, gay rights, ?human rights,? and all the rest of the snot, dandruff, and earwax we have to pretend to believe if we want to avoid the attentions of the Thought Police.

So it is on this side of the pond. Old voting habits will persist, and sectionalism probably still has a few more decades of life in it; but for an intelligent and reflective person not much interested in Civil War reenactment, reasons to vote for one party rather than the other are approaching zero asymptotically.

Next, the Asian vote, which went 73 percent for Obama. Wassup with that? people keep asking me. I can?t improve on Steve Sailer?s explanation: Asians, like everyone else in the world except white European Gentiles, are ethnocentric, so they preferentially vote for the party of ethnocentrism. Duh.

Isn?t this against their own interests, shafted as they collectively are by the affirmative action and ?disparate impact? rackets? Sure it is. Mass Hispanic immigration is against black interests, yet when the Congressional Black Caucus votes on immigration issues, they might as well be paid shills of the Mexican government. Ethnic solidarity has its price, and the price is willingly paid. Disraeli had an explanation.

And Asian voters are immigrants with long-established urban Democratic ward-heeler networks. One of the first sights I ever saw in the USA, arriving in New York?s Chinatown in August of 1973, was a banner prominently strung across Mott Street urging the locals, in Chinese characters, to vote for Ai-bi Bi-en.


A very high proportion of hopeful Republican commentary is about this or that ethnic group being natural Republicans, if only we can open their eyes to their economic and social interests. It?s all nonsense, sheer wishful thinking, as one of the 20th century?s most successful politicians explained. I keep quoting this, but that?s because you don?t listen:

In multiracial societies, you don?t vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.

Out on the Disreputable Right where I do my partying, there has been some cautious glee this past week because of the sheer quantity of talk about race and demography in respectable news outlets. Even Fox News, the inner donjon of the neocon media establishment, has been chewing over the election results? ethnic implications. Is America awakening to race realism?

I wouldn?t bet on it. The egalitarian fantasy has tremendous emotional appeal to Americans and is promoted and enforced by mighty social powers. It has its momentary retreats, as in the ?interglacial? era (Peter Brimelow?s term) of the mid-1990s, but it just comes back again stronger than ever.

So it will be again this time around. There will be a few weeks of guarded openness on the major-media outlets, then the enforcers will find their truncheons and we?ll be back to celebrating diversity and building the socialist utopia in which everything is equal to everything else.

The key to understanding the dynamics of multiracial nations in a globalized world is an appreciation of human nature in its tribal and racial aspects. Such appreciation has mighty political, social, and psychological barriers to breach among white people even when the science is indisputable, which it by no means yet is. I?d say we are a full generation away from popular acceptance of realism about race among whites.

In the meantime, the Republican fantasy about recruiting minorities onto their voter rolls will persist, while thirty million more Third World immigrants surge in and the Democrats will win more and more presidential elections.

 http://takimag.com/article/brooms_and_shovels_john_derbyshire/print#ixzz2DGUMB81w
I speak of civil, social man under law, and no other.
-Sir Edmund Burke

Xavier_Onassis

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Re: Brooms and Shovels
« Reply #1 on: November 25, 2012, 03:58:36 PM »
For once, Derbyshire has it right,at least when he says that the Republicans are in decline and have little hope of getting the Hispanic vote. He is  some sort of Fascist, but at least a realistic one.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

Religious Dick

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Re: Brooms and Shovels
« Reply #2 on: November 25, 2012, 04:04:44 PM »
For once, Derbyshire has it right,at least when he says that the Republicans are in decline and have little hope of getting the Hispanic vote. He is  some sort of Fascist, but at least a realistic one.

If the fascists are the last men standing between us and the rule of "sleek young metrosexuals in thousand-dollar suits whose thoughts stray not one millimeter from the dogmas of the New Universal Faith - globalism, feminism, multiculturalism, gay rights, "human rights," and all the rest of the snot, dandruff, and earwax we have to pretend to believe if we want to avoid the attentions of the Thought Police.", by all means, put me down as a supporter.
I speak of civil, social man under law, and no other.
-Sir Edmund Burke

Xavier_Onassis

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Re: Brooms and Shovels
« Reply #3 on: November 25, 2012, 04:15:42 PM »
I reject Derbyshire's silly opinion of the "elitist liberals". He is full of beans.

You and he are outnumbered, anyway.That is his point. He and his offspring voted for Romney, and Romney lost. He certainly can vote GOP all he wishes.
« Last Edit: November 25, 2012, 04:21:27 PM by Xavier_Onassis »
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

BT

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Re: Brooms and Shovels
« Reply #4 on: November 25, 2012, 05:48:01 PM »
Soon it will be about makers vs takers. And there will always be more makers than takers else the takers game fails.

Plane

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Re: Brooms and Shovels
« Reply #5 on: November 25, 2012, 05:59:28 PM »
Are you sure it will not be generational ?

As a shrinking workforce pays increased payroll tax to support a growing retired population?

Two strong voting blocks there, and they both think they are makers.

BT

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Re: Brooms and Shovels
« Reply #6 on: November 25, 2012, 06:15:19 PM »
Take out the retired folks (more precisely those over 55) who consume ss and medicare benefits that they prepaid for or will be grandfathered into the existing programs , and you will see that the makers still out number the takers.






Xavier_Onassis

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Re: Brooms and Shovels
« Reply #7 on: November 25, 2012, 08:09:58 PM »
When the actual makers are robots owned by a few fatcats,the entire game changes.

Or at least there is a possibility that it can change.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

BT

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Re: Brooms and Shovels
« Reply #8 on: November 25, 2012, 08:18:31 PM »
Will robots be enfranchised?

Xavier_Onassis

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Re: Brooms and Shovels
« Reply #9 on: November 25, 2012, 08:24:37 PM »
I see no reason to give robots the vote. A robot can paint a car better than any person,but that does not make it a sufficiently sentient being.

In Bicententennial Man, the butler robots were discontinued and the robo Robin Williams was unique.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

Plane

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Re: Brooms and Shovels
« Reply #10 on: November 25, 2012, 10:13:15 PM »
Will robots be enfranchised?

If they are smarter than we are , why should they ask?

Will Human beings be enfranchised?

BT

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Re: Brooms and Shovels
« Reply #11 on: November 25, 2012, 10:40:11 PM »
In the US, qualified humans have the vote.

Christians4LessGvt

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Re: Brooms and Shovels
« Reply #12 on: November 25, 2012, 11:53:51 PM »
Soon it will be about makers vs takers. And there will always be more makers than takers else the takers game fails.

Yes eventually the great fraud will fail, but in many ways we are already there BT.
They simpily use a printing press...printing money to make up the difference
they need to buy off the "47%" of takers.
As long as this immoral fraud can continue they will ride this pony.
Just like if many people had a tree that grew money....they would use it.
Like most serious drug addictions....it will end badly and with great pain.
"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" - Ronald Reagan - June 12, 1987

BT

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Re: Brooms and Shovels
« Reply #13 on: November 25, 2012, 11:56:34 PM »
The greenbacks are backed by the full faith and credit of the US Government.

That faith will be shattered if a bunch of makers go Galt.

And then where will the takers be?

Faithless.

BSB

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Re: Brooms and Shovels
« Reply #14 on: November 26, 2012, 01:00:09 AM »
It actually goes more like this:




Yes, 47% of Households Owe No Taxes. Look Closer.

By DAVID LEONHARDT



"About three-quarters of households pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes.

That’s the portion of American households that owe no income tax for 2009. The number is up from 38 percent in 2007, and it has become a popular talking point on cable television and talk radio. With Tax Day coming on Thursday, 47 percent has become shorthand for the notion that the wealthy face a much higher tax burden than they once did while growing numbers of Americans are effectively on the dole.

Neither one of those ideas is true. They rely on a cleverly selective reading of the facts. So does the 47 percent number.

Given that taxes are likely to be one of the big political issues of the next few years — and maybe the biggest one — it’s worth understanding who really pays what in taxes. Once you do, you can get a sense for our country’s fiscal options. How, in other words, will we be able to close the huge looming gap between the taxes we are scheduled to pay and the services we are scheduled to receive?

The answer is that tax rates almost certainly have to rise more on the affluent than on other groups. Over the last 30 years, rates have fallen more for the wealthy, and especially the very wealthy, than for any other group. At the same time, their incomes have soared, and the incomes of most workers have grown only moderately faster than inflation.

 So a much greater share of income is now concentrated at the top of distribution, while each dollar there is taxed less than it once was. It’s true that raising taxes on the rich alone can’t come close to solving the long-term budget problem. The deficit is simply too big. But if taxes are not increased for the wealthy, the country will be left with two options.

It will have to raise taxes even more than it otherwise would on everybody else. Or it will have to find deep cuts in Medicare, Social Security, military spending and the other large (generally popular) federal programs.

All the attention being showered on “47 percent” is ultimately a distraction from that reality.

The 47 percent number is not wrong. The stimulus programs of the last two years — the first one signed by President George W. Bush, the second and larger one by President Obama — have increased the number of households that receive enough of a tax credit to wipe out their federal income tax liability.

But the modifiers here — federal and income — are important. Income taxes aren’t the only kind of federal taxes that people pay. There are also payroll taxes and investment taxes, among others. And, of course, people pay state and local taxes, too.

Even if the discussion is restricted to federal taxes (for which the statistics are better), a vast majority of households end up paying federal taxes. Congressional Budget Office data suggests that, at most, about 10 percent of all households pay no net federal taxes. The number 10 is obviously a lot smaller than 47.

The reason is that poor families generally pay more in payroll taxes than they receive through benefits like the Earned Income Tax Credit. It’s not just poor families for whom the payroll tax is a big deal, either. About three-quarters of all American households pay more in payroll taxes, which go toward Medicare and Social Security, than in income taxes.

Focusing on the statistical middle class — the middle 20 percent of households, as ranked by income — underlines this point. Households in this group made $35,400 to $52,100 in 2006, the last year for which the Congressional Budget Office has released data. That would describe a household with one full-time worker earning about $17 to $25 an hour. Such hourly pay is typical for firefighters, preschool teachers, computer support specialists, farmers, members of the clergy, mail carriers, secretaries and truck drivers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Taking into account both taxes and tax credits, the average household in this group paid a total income tax rate of just 3 percent. A good number of people, in fact, paid no net income taxes. They are among the alleged free riders.

But the modifiers here — federal and income — are important. Income taxes aren’t the only kind of federal taxes that people pay. There are also payroll taxes and investment taxes, among others. And, of course, people pay state and local taxes, too.

Even if the discussion is restricted to federal taxes (for which the statistics are better), a vast majority of households end up paying federal taxes. Congressional Budget Office data suggests that, at most, about 10 percent of all households pay no net federal taxes. The number 10 is obviously a lot smaller than 47.

The reason is that poor families generally pay more in payroll taxes than they receive through benefits like the Earned Income Tax Credit. It’s not just poor families for whom the payroll tax is a big deal, either. About three-quarters of all American households pay more in payroll taxes, which go toward Medicare and Social Security, than in income taxes.

Focusing on the statistical middle class — the middle 20 percent of households, as ranked by income — underlines this point. Households in this group made $35,400 to $52,100 in 2006, the last year for which the Congressional Budget Office has released data. That would describe a household with one full-time worker earning about $17 to $25 an hour. Such hourly pay is typical for firefighters, preschool teachers, computer support specialists, farmers, members of the clergy, mail carriers, secretaries and truck drivers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Taking into account both taxes and tax credits, the average household in this group paid a total income tax rate of just 3 percent. A good number of people, in fact, paid no net income taxes. They are among the alleged free riders.

But the picture starts to change when you look not just at income taxes but at all taxes. This average household would have paid 0.8 percent of its income in corporate taxes (through the stocks it owned), 0.9 percent in gas and other federal excise taxes, and 9.5 percent in payroll taxes. Add these up, and the family’s total federal tax rate was 14.2 percent.

I realize that it’s possible to argue that payroll taxes should be excluded from the discussion because they pay for benefits — Social Security and Medicare — that people receive on the back end. But that argument doesn’t seem very persuasive.

Why? People do not receive benefits equal to the payroll taxes they paid. Those who die at age 70 will receive much less in Social Security and Medicare than they paid in taxes. Those who die at 95 will probably get much more.

The different kinds of federal taxes are really just accounting categories. At the end of the day, the government has to cover the cost of all its operations with revenue from all its taxes. We can’t wish our deficit away by saying that it’s mostly a Medicare and Social Security deficit.

If anything, the government numbers I’m using here exaggerate how much of the tax burden falls on the wealthy. These numbers fail to account for the income that is hidden from tax collectors — a practice, research shows, that is more common among affluent families. “Because higher-income people are understating their income,” Joel Slemrod, a tax scholar at the University of Michigan, says, “We’ve been overstating their average tax rates.”

State and local taxes, meanwhile, may actually be regressive. That is, middle-class and poor families may face higher tax rates than the wealthy. As Kim Rueben of the Tax Policy Center notes, state and local income taxes and property taxes are less progressive than federal taxes, while sales taxes end up being regressive. The typical family pays a lot of state and local taxes, too — almost half as much as in federal taxes.

There is no question that the wealthy pay a higher overall tax rate than any other group. That is an American tradition. But there is also no question that their tax rates have fallen more than any other group’s over the last three decades. The only reason they are paying more taxes than in the past is that their pretax incomes have risen so rapidly — which hardly seems a great rationale for a further tax cut.

So why are those radio and television talk show hosts spending so much time arguing that today’s wealthy are unfairly burdened? Well, it’s hard not to notice that the talk show hosts themselves tend to be among the very wealthy.

No doubt, like the rest of us, they don’t particularly enjoy paying taxes. They are happy with the tax cuts they have received lately. They would prefer if other people had to pick up the bill for Medicare, Social Security and the military — people like, say, firefighters, preschool teachers, computer support specialists, farmers, members of the clergy, mail carriers, secretaries and truck drivers.

http://www.skweezer.com/s.aspx?q=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/business/economy/14leonhardt.html