Puget Sound Liberals Weekly Newsletter #208
Enhancing Freedom, Opportunity and Cooperation in
Through informing and networking Liberals and Liberal Organizations.
Our vision is hundreds of thousands of well-informed
Our Website Our Editor To Unsubscribe Table of
Contents * Featured Articles Calendars of Events Communication with Our Members 4 Years of Consecutive Puget Sound Liberals Newsletters* Opportunities Petitions Commentaries from Our Members Rich Austin: Pragmatism Must Not Include Sacrificing Our
Ideals* Liberals and Democrats Links to the Beef Tea Party Conservatives Are Being
Used to Raise Money Electing Democratic Congress
Members depends on Jobs State and Local Links
to the Beef Featured Advocacy Group: Washington Public Campaigns* Washington Public Campaigns Urgently Needs Your Support** Nation and World Links to the Beef Change Banks to Provide Needed Main Street Loans** More Effort Needed to Reduce Health Care Fraud Global Trends Toward Dispersion of Influence Our Liberal Spirit Using Our Freedoms and Opportunities* Our
Political Priorities ·
Fair Clean
Elections and Open Government ·
Fair Taxes and
Competent Spending ·
Investment for
Productivity ·
Quality
Health, Education, Jobs, Income ·
Environmental
Protection and Energy Independence ·
Security and
Equal Rights ·
Justice and
Peace Everywhere ·
International
Cooperation and Leadership Conservatives oppose all of these Let’s
End Our National Nightmare
Let’s
Restore Our American Dream More on Conservative opposition to our
American Dream Washington State’s 5 Major Needs · Federal Funding for Health and Education · Substituting
a Progressive Income Tax · Replacing
Conservative Legislators Quote of the Week A New Year Offers New
Opportunities
Calendar of Events
Saturday, January 9th at 9:45 AM - 2:30 PM
at Seattle Pacific University, Gwinn Room (3310 Sixth
Avenue West, Seattle) - 2010
Environmental Priorities Coalition Legislative Workshop. Sponsored by Washington Environmental
Council, Washington Toxics Council and other environmental organizations. $10 + $10 for lunch. To
Register.
Sunday,
January 10th at 3 to 5 PM at Trinity United Methodist Church (6512
23rd Ave. N.W., Seattle) - Washington State Progressive Electoral
Coalition (WSPEC) kick-off meeting to recruit a Progressive candidate to run
against Patty Murray for Senate. RSVP. The purpose of
this meeting will be to approve the principles guiding the WSPEC, select an
initial WSPEC Steering Committee, hold initial discussions about suitable U.S.
Senate candidates, select a Nomination Committee to seek out and recruit
suitable Senate candidates, and set the time and date for the second
meeting. A second meeting will concentrate on starting up the Senate
campaign, selection of our endorsed candidate and exploring ways for us to
support her/his campaign.
Monday, January 18 at 8:30 AM at Capitol Theater (206 5th Ave SE, Olympia) - Peoples Summit and March on our Capitol. To Register.
Communication
with Our Members
Four Years of Consecutive Puget Sound Liberals
Newsletters
This issue of our Puget Sound Liberals
newsletter marks the completion of 4 years of consecutive newsletters, never
skipping a week. During these four
years, our membership has grown from several hundred Liberal residents of our
Lake Hills Neighborhood to 3500 Liberals from Puget Sound, the rest of Washington
and some elsewhere.
Our vision has remained constant:
hundreds of thousands of Puget Sound Liberals working together to enhance our
people’s freedoms and opportunities and their ability to use them. We attempt to realize this vision through
three strategies:
1. To enable Liberals to understand our
Liberal values, opponents, history, present priorities and political
strategies. Do this by
going to our home page and to our basic training
sections of our website.
2. To enable Liberals to identify others
who share their concerns and communicate, associate and cooperate with them. Do this by going to our list
of advocacy organizations on our website, learning about their vision,
mission, objectives and activities. Then
join those that share your concerns.
3.
To enable Liberals to learn of the basic facts and issues of current
political and economic events instead of relying on the cynical and superficial
commentaries presented by commercial media pundits. To do this, scan our
commentaries and links to other commentaries which appear in our weekly
newsletters. Read in detail those that
interest you. Based upon studying
hundreds of commentaries each week and doing other research, these commentaries
provide more such information than are presented by our newspapers, magazines,
radio and television. All of these
newsletters are also archived
on our website.
By
taking advantage of these resources, you can become a much more effective
Liberal, working confidently to realize our values in cooperation with others.
Note that our assumption is that we can
best realize our Liberal values by strengthening our abilities, instead of
wasting our time trying to convert Conservatives. Some Conservatives may become so disgusted
with New Conservatives and Tea Party Conservatives that they become
Independents, without any proselytizing by Liberals.
Opportunities
Useful
Websites: contacts, maps, community organizing tools, and more.
Petitions
Tell
your legislators that marijuana users shouldn’t be arrested.
Commentaries
From Our Members
Rich Austin: Pragmatism Must Not Include Sacrificing
Our Ideals
Comment on article “Want
Jobs. Then Create Jobs.” (Newsletter # 207)
John Burbank’s New Deal, WPA
approach is spot on. It is a good beginning.
We must also address the inherent evils of corporatism in order to attain
long-term solutions.
“Compromise” and “pragmatism”
are two words that drip from the lips of politicians and pundits alike.
The definition of compromise
is “a
settlement of differences by mutual adjustment”.
Pragmatism is defined as: “concerned
with practical considerations or consequences”.
There are 47 million people
without health care in the U.S. Over 50% of all bankruptcies are the result of
medical debt. There is an illegal war that has taken many lives and robbed our
national treasury. The working class has
suffered foreclosures. Poverty is on the
rise. Unemployment is above 10%. There is an alarming increase in the number of
hate groups. Fellow workers are being
scapegoated by the powers that be in an attempt to keep us divided.
Remember, the definition of
pragmatism is “concerned with practical considerations or consequences”. Poverty,
war, untreated medical deficiencies, unemployment, homelessness, or racism are
not practical consequences. None of us
would choose them.
And compromise doesn’t mean
having half of what is needed and then compromising part of that away.
When politicians talk about
pragmatism or compromise, rest assured they are not talking about justice. Those are their code words for “retreat”! The cold hard facts are this: The
military-industrial complex, financiers, and the medical profits industry have
literally purchased the allegiance of many lawmakers. Most have no concept of what it means to be
working class. Of the 535 Members of
Congress, fewer than 10% identify themselves as coming from the working
class.
The numbers speak for themselves. The working class is wretchedly
underrepresented in Congress. Events
over the past several decades provide a dismal picture of what that means to
everyday people.
Working class families have fallen behind even as the
stock market soared and rich people became richer. We need look no further than
the current economic crisis. Wealthy people entered it rich and will emerge
filthy rich, It will only have been the working class that will have suffered.
A little over 50 years ago, a
labor historian had this to say: “If there is any one paramount characteristic
of books on working class history, it is that they are not histories of the
people. Histories of the generals, the diplomats, and the politicians there are
plenty; histories of the people – the plain people – there are few.” Today, most politicians and pundits who write
books and appear on television news shows glorify war, and apologize for
inhumane “free market” excesses. And they do so while telling us tell to be
“pragmatic” and to “compromise”. And so,
it is within the narrow parameters set by Wall Street investors and their
apologists that we are being cautioned to be “pragmatic”. Those are the limitations in which we are
being told to “compromise”.
We must never accept those
limitations. Pragmatism and
compromise must only be considered within the context and parameters of transformation
in order to win justice for the working class.
The working class definition of pragmatism is ending war, caring for the
ill, housing the homeless, job-creation, and all the rest of what is
needed. It calls for compromise on the
part of the greedy and protection of the needy.
That’s it! No less!
Which brings us to the main
point. Plenty of politicians tell us
that the manufacturing jobs they allowed corporate America to move offshore
will never return. Who says? “They” say, that’s who. The same people who tell you and me to
compromise and be pragmatic, that’s who.
The tail that’s wagging the dog, that’s who.
Manufacturing jobs can be
returned. If goods can be manufactured in nations where exploitation is a
matter of routine, they can be manufactured right here in the U.S. too! Forget macroeconomics! Instead, ask yourself this question: “How has
the robust stock market bettered the lives of the working class?” It hasn’t.
It has made wealthy investors – both foreign and domestic – very wealthy,
while U.S. workers have been losing ground.
We must begin by dumping NAFTA, WTO, CAFTA, and other pro-corporate,
anti-worker “free” trade schemes.
First, however, we must set
the groundwork for doing so. Lawmakers
must be promised that we’ll kick them to the curb come election time unless
they begin serving the needs of ordinary people. Next, we must be ready, willing and able to
fulfill our promise and thereafter send recalcitrant politicians packing. Nothing scares politicians like ballot box
revenge!
As the old labor song goes,
“There is pow’r, there is pow’r in a
band of workingmen [and women] when they stand hand in hand.” The life and death question is this: Will we our “pow’r” for the common good? Rich
Austin
Liberals
and Democrats
Government Watch
Also go to Whitehouse.gov.
Foreign and Domestic Staff
Contrary to
past administrations, our
foreign policy staff members are working well together. Our top staff members concerned with economic
policy are less cooperative. For more.
Health Care Reform
Senate and
House Democrats may
work informally to create a mutually acceptable bill, forgoing a conference
committee which would be subject to Republican obstruction. For
more. For
more.
Surveillance and Security
Too much surveillance
results in too much data, making it more difficult to connect the dots of
surveillance relevant to protecting our security.
Tea Party Conservatives Are Being Used to
Raise Money
The
following is included in a commentary
by Stephanie Mencimer:
“Tea Party Patriots and Tea Party Express have been
clashing for months over which group truly represents the movement. A
flashpoint came this fall when a member of the Tea Party Patriots' board, Amy
Kremer, switched sides and joined Tea Party Express, allegedly taking the
Patriots' extensive email database with her and locking the rest of the board
out of the TPP website. In November, this led the Patriots to go to court to
get an injunction against her to reclaim ownership of the group's electronic
resources. The fight hasn't helped the Patriots' view of their tea party rivals.
In fact, "real" Tea Party activists -- i.e., local organizers like
Stublen who consider themselves the grassroots heart of the movement -- see Tea
Party Express as bad for business, as it lends credence to criticism that the
movement is nothing more than a sophisticated Astroturf scheme or GOP front.”
Electing Democratic Congress Member depends on Jobs
The following is included in a commentary
by Robert Reich:
“Issue
Number One -- the overriding concern that will determine more than
anything how many seats the Democrats lose next fall -- is jobs. If
unemployment is 10 percent or more next November, the Dems are in danger of
losing the House and will almost certainly be short of the 60 votes they need
in the Senate.”
I am hopeful that unemployment will be below 10
percent before next November. I also
believe that voters will not just blame Democrats for the lack of jobs, and not
just vote for Republicans. Dave Thomas
Here’s the Beef
Could
a cap and trade bill be passed in 2010?
State
and Local
Featured Advocacy Group
------------------------- Washington Public Campaigns -----------------------------
Washington Public Campaigns
seeks public financing of all election campaigns in Washington. We want to
launch a statewide conversation about how we might reclaim our democracy — and
our voice — by limiting the influence of money in lawmaking.
Democracy in America is Threatened.
Increasingly, ordinary citizens have lost their
influence over lawmaking and public policy, because candidates must raise huge
sums to run for office, and because our elected representatives — often
concerned about financing their next campaign — tend to follow the bidding of
big donors rather than the true interests of voters in their district. The
result is public policies that often fail to meet the needs and desires of most
Americans. Furthermore, citizens are
increasingly cynical and jaded toward our political system and politicians,
with declining participation in our democracy and low turnout in voting. Too
many people say, "What's the use?"
We Need Full Public Financing of Election Campaigns
So that candidates who represent the people can afford
to run, and so that once in office, elected representatives are not obligated
to special interests and their lobbyists, for fear of losing campaign
contributions. This won't solve all of our problems, but it will go a long way
to breaking the link between big donors and public officials and to restoring a
government "of, by, and for the people."
This Work Is Not Just a Pipe Dream.
The states of Maine and Arizona have led
the way, adopting public financing of election campaigns through
citizen initiatives. Each year in those states, more candidates choose to run
with what is called Clean Money, Clean Elections, or Clean Campaigns. The
result has been higher voter turnout, wider discussion of important issues, and
new laws that benefit the majority of citizens.
Progress in Washington
In March, 2008, we achieved a legislative success: approval of a "local
option" law (SSB 5278) that lifts a 16-year ban on using public
funds for election campaigns at the local level. So now cities, counties, ports
and PUDs can create programs of optional public financing for campaigns for
local office.
In
the past, Seattle offered public financing to candidates for city council races
— and the program was successful through five election cycles. But in 1992,
voters statewide approved Initiative 134 — touted as "campaign finance
reform" but which contained fine print that outlawed using public funds in
any way for state and local campaigns — a ban that has now ended.
With
approval of the local option law, WPC has begun working with several local
cities and counties to design and establish "Voter-Owned Elections"
programs, whereby candidates running for local office could choose to run their
campaign on public funds, agreeing to abide by spending limits, to accept no
further private contributions and to use no more of their own money. In
exchange they receive funding sufficient to run a credible campaign. The 2008
local option law requires that any public financing program created by local
government be submitted to voters in a referendum, for their approval before it
can go into effect. (See "Voter-Owned
Elections Programs for Cities and Counties: Opportunity and Design"
PDF)
With
WPC's urging and participation, the Seattle City Council established an
advisory committee to design and recommend an updated public financing program
(See Seattle
Resolution PDF). Similarly in Olympia, WPC's Thurston County chapter
designed and submitted a proposed Voter-Owned Elections program to the city
council, which has referred the matter to committee for recommendations as to
next steps. And we're consulting with leaders in Spokane, King County, the
Seattle Port Commission, Pierce County/Tacoma and elsewhere, all of whom are
exploring the opportunities now available to establish public financing for
local races.
The Road
Ahead for Clean Campaigns / Public Financing
Washington State should establish public financing for campaigns for supreme
court seats — so that the court remains independent, impartial, and without a
hint of influence by private campaign donors.
(See proposal
and commentary).
In
addition, we are encouraging action at the federal level, to establish public
financing for campaigns for the U.S. Senate and Congress. (See proposed legislation).
We can do it! But grassroots
support is essential.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Washington Public Campaigns Urgently Needs Your
Support
I
have avoided asking for financial support for organizations. But this is an urgent exception. I assume you all realize how important public
campaign financing is. In its absence,
candidates receive private campaign financing, with the donors receiving tax
breaks and other concessions which cost our state and people many times more
than would public campaign financing.
Special interest donors also lobby against needed reforms.
Our
Washington Public Campaigns has done an excellent job, in spite of having only
one part time employee, Craig Salins. Thanks
to statewide organizing and scheduling of many events, our 2008 legislature
allowed local governments the option of public campaign finances - a definite
victory in this movement. This year, we hope
that public campaign financing will be approved for supreme judges. Then we hope to have public campaign
financing approved for state legislators and executive officers. Washington Public Campaigns also supports
efforts to gain congressional approval for public campaign financing for
congressional candidates.
Washington
Public Campaigns has found it difficult to raise the funds that it needs to
fund an appropriate level of staff. In
fact, Craig Salins has been laid off due to shortage of funds - and even now
with the renewal of a small foundation grant, to rehire him part time along
with two part-time field organizers, it is necessary to raise about $30,000
more than is presently available. A
private donor has agreed to match contributions, so $15,000 in matched
contributions is needed. That much would
be obtained if 50 people would contribute $25 per month, or 300 per year.
I
have been asking people to contribute, with about 1/3rd refusing,
1/3rd giving a one time contribution and 1/3 arranging a monthly contribution
of $15-25. Interestingly, the people who
are contributing are often struggling financially, while the people who don’t contribute
often have more money. My impression is
that perhaps half of Liberals give no donations to groups that are working to
realize Liberal values.
I
believe that besides canvassing to identify likely Democratic voters and
stimulating them to vote, the most effective action that our Liberals can take
is to support Washington Public Campaigns.
To make
arrangements for an automatic monthly donation, email Craig Salins. To make a one time donation, mail a check to
Washington Public Campaigns, P.O. Box 70452, Seattle, WA 98127-0452.
Here’s the Beef
Washington
needs to reform our unfair tax structure.
An oil tax may fund
storm water projects.
Nation
and World
Change Banks to Provide Needed Main Street Loans
The following is included in a commentary
by Arianna Huffington and Rob Johnson:
“The
idea is simple: If enough people who have money in one of the big four banks
move it into smaller, more local, more traditional community banks, then
collectively we, the people, will have taken a big step toward re-rigging the
financial system so it becomes again the productive, stable engine for growth
it's meant to be. It's neither Left nor Right -- it's populism at its best.
Consider it a withdrawal tax on the big banks for the negative service they
provide by consistently ignoring the public interest. It's time for Americans
to move their money out of these reckless behemoths. And you don't have to
worry, there is zero risk: deposit insurance is just as good at small banks --
and unlike the big banks they don't provide the toxic dividend of derivatives
trading in a heads-they-win, tails-we-lose fashion.
Think of the message it will send to Wall Street --
and to the White House. That we have had enough of the high-flying,
no-limits-casino banking culture that continues to dominate Wall Street and
Capitol Hill. That we won't wait on Washington to act, because we know that
Washington has, in fact, been a part of the problem from the start. We simply
can't count on Congress to fix things. We have to do it ourselves -- and the
big banks are the core of the problem. We need to return to the stable,
reliable, people-oriented approach of America's community banks.”
We Must Break Up Monopolies
The following is included in
a commentary
by Daniela Perdoma:
“There
are two main types of problems. One is that antimonopoly law is a political law
-- not economic, as you might suspect. You prevent monopolies because you don’t
want a concentration of economic power that gives beneficiaries political
power. So monopolies are a huge political problem.
Look at things now. We essentially have a merger of Goldman Sachs and the
Treasury Department. So we don’t actually know who’s running the Treasury. We
have a political crisis, in which we’ve had a coup by the bankers. And the
bankers don’t only control banks but also all the large corporations. The way
governance has been changed, we give financiers direct control over our largest
corporations.
In Europe, when people invest $1 billion in Airbus, they get new machinery, new
plants, new skills, and create jobs. When we invest in Boeing, a huge portion
of that money goes straight out the backdoor and into the financiers who run
the company.
The second [problem] is that our systems become more and more fragile. What we
saw on Sept. 15, 2008, after the failure of Lehman Brothers, was how the entire
financial system was tied together in such a way that unless a major infusion
of money came at once, basically everything was going to go down. If you’re not
able to move money around, you can’t move product around -- potentially a
lights-out event. It’s pretty amazing that we would run our financial system so
poorly, really.
This systemic risk is a result of monopolists preaching efficiency because they
want to take cash out of the system. For example, let’s say they have two
machines, and sell one. They get money for the machine they sell, and then the
one left over will be more expensive to use so they can charge more for its
use. They pocket the money from the machine they sell and get more money off
the one machine they have left. The problem, though, is they only have one machine
left. If something goes wrong, we can have huge systemic failures, especially
if, say, the product this machine makes is something like semiconductors or
chemicals that go into many products. If all production of these keystone items
is in one place, it looks efficient -- financiers and economists will
tell you this, and do -- but they have created the potential for catastrophic
failure if something happens that takes that one machine or one plant or one
foundry out of operation.
If we don’t do anything we have a truly massive political challenge. We can
pretend we’re living a democracy, in a republic, but if you look at Obama’s
background he was adopted by and promoted by the ruling machine, which was set
up at [the Brookings Institution’s] Hamilton Project. Those were the people who
vetted this man and who’ve surrounded this man. Though I have huge admiration
for him and retain faith in his potential to stand up these people, he is still
essentially inside this circle.
The other problem is the longer we wait the greater the chance that we’ll have
another event like what happened last year. And the next event could be much
worse. We could see truly catastrophic crashes affect our system. We have no
choice but to fix the concentration of power. It’s politically unacceptable and
it’s unacceptable from an engineering perspective.”
More Effort Needed to Reduce Health Care Fraud
The following is included in a commentary
by Suzy Khimm:
“Often preying on the program’s elderly and poor
beneficiaries, Medicare fraudsters cost the
government $47 billion last year alone, using billing scams that some officials
have called more profitable than drug-trafficking. Earlier this
month, 26 individuals in three cities were arrested a series of raids for
bilking Medicare of $61 million, including a Florida doctor accused of running
a $40 million scheme that falsely listed patients as blind diabetics so he
could bill them for home nursing care. Similarly outrageous scams include false claims for power wheelchairs claimed to be
destroyed during Hurricane Katrina and drug prescriptions from doctors who have
died.
The reform bills moving through
Congress commit more than $100 million to prevent fraud and strengthen
enforcement practices. And by the time the Senate was finished working on its
bill, it had adopted even tougher anti-fraud measures
than the House had--increasing penalties for health-care fraud, expanding the
definition of actionable offenses, and devoting greater resources to fraud
detection. Such provisions would beef up the anti-fraud funds that Obama has
already pledged to HHS in the 2010 budget, which the agency says could save the government at least $2.7 billion.”
Global Trends toward Dispersion of Influence
The following is included in a commentary
by Michael Klare:
“As
the second decade of the twenty-first century begins, we find ourselves at one
of those relatively rare moments in history when major power shifts become
visible to all. If the first decade of the century witnessed profound
changes, the world of 2009 nonetheless looked at least somewhat like the world
of 1999 in certain fundamental respects: the United States remained the
world’s paramount military power, the dollar remained the world’s dominant
currency, and NATO remained its foremost military alliance, to name just three.
By the end of the second decade of this
century, however, our world is likely to have a genuinely different look to
it. Momentous shifts in global power relations and a changing of the
imperial guard, just now becoming apparent, will be far more pronounced by 2020
as new actors, new trends, new concerns, and new institutions dominate the
global space. Nonetheless, all of this is the norm of history, no matter
how dramatic it may seem to us.
Less normal -- and so the wild card of the
second decade (and beyond) -- is intervention by the planet itself.
Blowback, which we think of as a political phenomenon, will by 2020 have gained
a natural component. Nature is poised to strike back in unpredictable ways
whose effects could be unnerving and possibly devastating.
What, then, will be the dominant
characteristics of the second decade of the twenty-first century?
Prediction of this sort is, of course, inherently risky, but extrapolating from
current trends, four key aspects of second-decade life can be discerned:
1. Rise of China
2. Relative decline of the United States
3. Expanding role of the global South
4. Increasing impact of a roiling environment and growing
resource scarcity.”
I would add that Europe will maintain or increase its influence. Read the commentary
on Europe by Jonathan Chait. Although
the global south will increase its population, I doubt that it (including
India) will increase its influence, in large part due to the increasing effects
of increasing population upon its food supply.
We may thus tend toward much political and economic competition between
China, Europe and the United States in a world disrupted by global climate
change. Dave Thomas
Here’s the Beef
Our
Liberal Spirit
Using Our Freedoms and Opportunities
During 2009, the struggle to
reform health care has sucked all the air out of making other reforms which
might alienate special interests whose cooperation is needed for reforming
health care. Now that health care reform
is about to be passed, new opportunities are available to make other reforms.
We can expect that the Obama
administration will both focus upon job creation measures and upon making
reforms concerning unionization, immigration and GLBT rights. These reforms will appeal to labor unions,
Hispanics and GLBT, all liberal constituencies which will support election of
Democrats this fall. They will be
resisted by Republicans at the risk of alienating these groups.
With these new freedoms and
opportunities, Liberals should have various priorities:
·
Canvassing their
neighbors to identify likely Democratic voters and stimulate them to vote.
·
Contributing to
Washington Public Campaigns to enable it to maintain needed staff to continue
organizing to secure public campaign financing first for Supreme Court justices
and later for legislators.
·
Informing state
legislators and federal congress members that they will get no support unless
they support Main Street instead of Wall Street funding to create appropriate
loans instead of fueling speculation.
In the struggle for health
care reform, Liberal protests against the Senate bill were of little avail due
to the Senate rules. But in the
struggles for other reforms, Liberals may have some clout as Democratic
congress members realize that the reforms will increase their chances for
re-election at the expense of Republicans who will resist these reforms,
thereby harming their chances of broadening their appeal beyond their core Tea
Bag and Traditional Conservatives.
At last, Liberals have
freedoms and opportunities which offer clear actions that they can take to
effectively produce reforms, instead of just resenting their inability to
overcome the Senate rules that have produced a flawed health care reform. While some Liberal senators and house members
are not running this fall, many more Conservative senators and house members
are not running. The result is that ‘Do
Nothing’ Republicans may be unable to win elections, especially if attacked by
Tea Bag Conservatives for being less than pure concerning their attempts to
reach out to broader constituencies.
Recommended Books – See our list of books for liberals
Antonio Estache and Danny Leipziger (eds.), 2009, Stuck in the Middle. Is Fiscal Policy Failing the Middle Class?
Support from voters with incomes in middle 50-60% of income distribution is necessary for adoption of national economic policies. With this support, lower income people can be assisted. Without it, they can’t. The commentaries in this book identify the distributional effects of various fiscal policies. Knowing these is necessary for deciding which fiscal policies to implement to assist middle income people who will then support assisting people with lesser incomes.