LBO News from Doug Henwood

• About Doug Henwood
• CC license applies

1. Clinton gave us “welfare reform,” leading to the situation described in my previous link where millions ofvAmericans live in sub-third world conditions with no hope of improvement. Obama, starting hiscsecond term, is going to slash social security, condemning tens of millions of oldervAmericans to poverty, this after a capstone achievement of adopting the Heritage Foundation’s plan to ensure we never have National Health insurance or single payer. Since Dubya I’ve been campaigning for Democratic presidential candidates, including Obama because the opposition was increasingly psychotic, but this is a line too far. If, as seems likely, Obama accepts this sellout, I’m done with Democrats on the presential level.

   By: Andie on December 18, 2012
   at 11:08 am

2. you know what ? is right calculation ..

   By: princess1960 on December 18, 2012
   at 11:13 am

3. This was my first thought when I saw your post last night–what about people who won’t be retiring for 40 years? But later I wondered if that was right. The benefit that you get when you retire is based on your lifetime earnings–via a formula that isn’t affected by cost-of-living adjustment. Unless they adjust your earnings history? I dunno. But I’m thinking now that the COLA only kicks in after you retire.

   By: Jim Naureckas on December 18, 2012
   at 11:42 am

4. [...] Yesterday we argued for carrying the culture war into the heart of the American political economy. We made the very broad claim that a defining feature of our economic culture is the acceptance of limits. This might seem like a strange thing to say. Surely the last decade was marked not by limits but by a failure to acknowledge them. Individuals, businesses and eventually governments borrowed well beyond their means. That, so the story goes, was what created the credit crunch and the stagnant new normal. It is certainly the narrative behind the growing deal, in which Republicans appear to be ‘conceding’ on some tax hikes while Democrats accept 10-18% cuts to Social Security. [...]

   By: The Real Culture War II: Utopia, Austerity and the F***** C**** « thecurrentmoment on December 18, 2012
   at 12:06 pm

5. Andie, “sub-third world conditions”? I get that Obama and Clinton are center-rightists. I get that they buy into neoliberal economic theology. But seriously, if you can’t keep reality in perspective, you won’t do your preferred political movement much good. Yes, there are lots and lots of people in the US who have it really, really bad, but there’s just not that much of a comparison with what gets called the third world. The global average infant mortality rate is 51, and worse, as an average among the least-developed nations. In the US it’s 8. From undernourishment to literacy to access to clean drinking water, for all its deep flaws that require action, the US is happily very far from having much in the way of sub-third world conditions.

   By: Jonathan Teller-Elsberg on December 20, 2012
   at 12:27 pm

6. I fear the Democrats are so lacking in Mathematical Brinksmanship–they we’ll be off on their “World Retirement Vacation” while the Next “Young” contingency of up and coming “Rep-Cons”–(the ’80′s and ’90′s “born-again-raised in Reagan”) will “grab the Economic Cycle” (perhaps out of turn-?) and head Boom-Reet’s for a leveling off or a freeze of their benefits–and use either the CPI index or “Means-Testing” to go “Chop-Chop”–otherwise– the “Golden Age of Social Security Recipients” will find itself in the backroom of a “Disciples of Christ” Church stuffing envelopes!

   By: John Luckett on December 21, 2012
   at 2:57 pm

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