Excellent post larre

Actually, the middle class is getting richer. Good column by Bruce Bartlett a few days ago.

Link

The religious right has been quite conscientious in building up a climate that emphasizes the personal relationship and has had a much more ingrown sense of nationalistic fervor, the desire to promote religion as understood by conservatives as the only acceptable pattern of life. They are more engaged in promoting symbols of religion in public spaces, the insistence of prayer in public schools, where normally we recognize the separation of church and state, and spending lots of time on reproductive matters--abortion, stem-cell research and same-sex marriage. They have done a better job in the last few years of lifting those principles. But it happens that those are one-sided principles … I believe the religious right abandoned a strong commitment to the poor and abandoned a sense of inclusion of those who are different--whether it’s a different lifestyle or a different nationality or economic class … You can claim to be religious, but if you don’t care about justice or you don’t implement policies to bring more justice to the poor, if you don’t understand truth in politics, if you don’t have a commitment to quality education for all people … that is not the Christianity I read about in the Holy Book. And we all read from the same book.

----- Rev James A. Forbes Jr.

The Republican party, as represented by the Bush administration, has two factions, both intent on taking us back to the 16th century. The religous right want's a return to the Christian Mythology of that period and the economic policy makers are determined to return us to economic feudalism.

We had a cute name for it in the Nineteenth Century. We called it the Gilded Age. Ha! We used to have so much fun back then. We'd make up these wild reckless names as we spent 18 hours a day 7 days a week making products we didn't have a snowballs chance in the Carnegie steel plant of buying. But we had fun. Us and our children working on the shop floor right along side of us.

"Those were the days my friend
We prayed they come to an end
We'd work and die forever and a day
For what was there to choose?
Knowing we'd always lose.
We didn't know the Roosevelts were on the way."

Everybody. Now just the ladies.

We get a middle-class with record high credit card debt, then take away the bankruptcy back door on that debt, Then the middle-class runs up their equity tap, making it an all-time high.
When the housing boom crashes, people will be trapped behind over-extended credit lines and obligations.
Then comes the jobs pressure : jobs will be so few, and cash flows so stretched, that jobs will be coveted. Say goodby to raises, benefits, the works.
Ownership will mean serfdom.

muck, don't bother sending us links to links from conservative columnists. send us statistics. hard facts.you know, stuff like these charts derived from census data. Showing things like this: from 1979-2000 after tax family income for the bottom 20% was up 9% (in 21 years!). For the top 1%? Up 201%. That's the Reagan 'rich get richer' revolution right there.

Haven't seen the comparable charts for 2000-2004, but I believe they show negative growth at the bottom, yet still positive at the top. Anyone have those stats.

muck, don't bother sending us links to links from conservative columnists. send us statistics. hard facts.you know, stuff like these charts derived from census data. Showing things like this: from 1979-2000 after tax family income for the bottom 20% was up 9% (in 21 years!). For the top 1%? Up 201%. That's the Reagan 'rich get richer' revolution right there.

Haven't seen the comparable charts for 2000-2004, but I believe they show negative growth at the bottom, yet still positive at the top. Anyone have those stats.

muck, don't bother sending us links to links from conservative columnists. send us statistics. hard facts.you know, stuff like these charts derived from census data. Showing things like this: from 1979-2000 after tax family income for the bottom 20% was up 9% (in 21 years!). For the top 1%? Up 201%. That's the Reagan 'rich get richer' revolution right there.

Haven't seen the comparable charts for 2000-2004, but I believe they show negative growth at the bottom, yet still positive at the top. Anyone have those stats.

sorry about that multiple post, I kept getting server errors and hadn't realised it was actually posting. mea culpa. mea maxima culpa.

Richard, good point about the credit card debt. This one really annoys me. These banks were completely negligent in giving credit to a bunch of people who shouldn't have been given so much rope (as it were). Now the banks are crying because, surprise!, a lot of that debt turns out to be uncollectible. Rather than actually taking responsibility for their own negligence, they are out to further the damage to the people who owe them money. Sure I understand that these people ran up debts and there should be consequences, but declaring bankruptcy is not exactly getting off scot-free/ I've seen friends go through this, it is not pretty. But the banks think they should get off scot-free for their bad business practices. What's with that? Don't the laws of the market say that if a company is run that badly they deserve to go out of business? We hear all this blather about holding the debtors responsible, but how about holding the bad management at these credit card companies responsible? I might be sympathetic to an argument to reform the bankruptcy laws going forward in exchange for reinstating the laws against usury, and forcing the banks to write off all debt which was due to their extending credit they shouldn't have. Not that we'll ever see a deal like that discussed in congress.

I keep saying that the current Republican party has the most reactionary fiscal policy since the Bourbons. Nice to have a little agreement.

We had a cute name for it in the Nineteenth Century. We called it the Gilded Age. Ha! We used to have so much fun back then. We'd make up these wild reckless names as we spent 18 hours a day 7 days a week making products we didn't have a snowballs chance in the Carnegie steel plant of buying. But we had fun. Us and our children working on the shop floor right along side of us.

"Those were the days my friend
We prayed they come to an end
We'd work and die forever and a day
For what was there to choose?
Knowing we'd always lose.
We didn't know the Roosevelts were on the way."

Everybody. Now just the ladies.

They just build the default rate into their interest rates.

extending credit they shouldn't have

But they had to or face discrimination lawsuits.

Those folks who do pay those "usury" rates are subsidizing those who default.

But they had to or face discrimination lawsuits.

Not sure what you meant by that, but it sure comes across as a racist comment. Or what sort of discrimination lawsuits are you thinking of?

In any case I'm talking about banks that have been aggressively marketing their credit card services to people, giving them larger credit lines than their financials suggest they can support, and hoping they will run up debt so the company can make lots of money off of interest and late fees. That is the standard operating procedure of some very large credit companies over the last 10-15 eyars. Now they are shocked, shocked, that people are overextended and need to declare bankruptcy.

Thanks for giving me one more condition for my ideal credit bill: any company that advertises or otherwise does marketing to increase it's credit card customer base is not protected from having their customers use today's bankruptcy standard for reorganizing their debt. Not a ban on advertising, which might be unconstitutional, just consequences for doing it.