HughBeaumont

HughBeaumont's Journal

October 12, 2014

Dumb letters to the PD Dept: "You guys have it WAAAAAY BETTER!!"

http://blog.cleveland.com/letters/2014/10/middle_class_lives_better_than.html

Liberal economist Paul Krugman is chief spokesman for the "income inequality" crowd. In his column "Ostentation, your ship has come in thanks to changed economic times" (Forum, Sept. 28), he presses his theme that the super-rich have fattened up at the expense of the middle class. But he disproves his own thesis by harking back to the 1950's, when, he says, because of higher taxes, tycoons had more modest lifestyles than today's nabobs.

The fact is the middle class lives infinitely better today than in the 50's, even though that was a decade of unprecedented prosperity. I was there. If my father, who died in 1959, could come back, he would be astounded by our houses - mile after mile of homes that only rich people would have dreamed of then; our cars - an SUV and sedan in most garages; our restaurants; our vacations, summer cottages, winter homes and RVs; our clothing - one child's clothes would fill all the closets in our old house; our school-age children walking around with smart phones and so on.

Krugman highlights yachts. Have you seen a yacht in any of the Lake Erie marinas? I haven't, but thousands of pleasure craft. What plutocrats own those? What about golf courses?

Sure, he could give you statistics that incomes have stagnated, but what would you expect when the labor force has increased by the entry of so many women?
If our way of life is threatened, it is not because of income inequality, but because the next generation may think they have a constitutional right to start the day with a $4 cup of coffee.

John Duffy,

Avon Lake

And from my city, no less. Classic.

It's like he's living in an imagined world where the American middle/working/poor classes are just living SO high off the hog and economic opportunity is in abundance and job security has never been better and we're with the jet set in Dubai and . ... luxuries like cellphones for kids abound . . .. because reasons.

His sentence about yachts and golf courses .. . . . . yeah, anyone got a google map to that point?

. .. . Of course, if you read the comments, I responded in kind.

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About HughBeaumont

If anyone's wondering why I haven't been here much lately, it's because I feel no one is learning anything from 2016. Neoliberalism is a thing and it doesn't win elections in the 21st Century. People want a candidate that's going to take strong, non-waffling stands on human rights the rest of the world enjoys. Enough living in the goddamned Reagan 1980s. Enough taking solar panels off the roof. Enough introducing more rightwingedness into American economics. Enough medical bankruptcies. Enough governing by mythology. Enough science denial. Enough of spitting on women, children, veterans and the LGBTQI community. Enough kicking the can. ENOUGH. America needs to move past it's "everything has to be about making a buck" bullshit. I'd prefer a candidate not born during the FDR/Truman administrations. No offense, but you had your time . . . and you got us Trump. Plus, I can't take another one of these still-Capitalist Boomer codgers yap on about "bootstraps" when college now costs a mortgage, necessity costs have been outpacing wage growth for 20 years and automation promises to kill more jobs than it creates. I don't want to hear what is or isn't "politically achievable". Kick-the-Can economics was never asked "How is it going to be paid for?". Tax Cuts for the rich were never given a spending limit. Folly wars were never asked "Why is this necessary?". Corporate Pork by the billions was and is always approved. America's safety net needs to be greatly expanded and retirement age needs to be drastically lowered. This country throws out far too many people that still have a decade or two of prime contribution left. If life doesn't get fairer for you or I pretty goddamned quickly, we aren't going to have much of one.