1. So what? This still makes that fraction of the 47% federal tax payers.

2. Ask those same people to look at their check stubs and ask them if they are “federal tax payers” due to their payroll tax contributions. The answer will (invariably in my experience) be “yes.” And they will be right. That they have cognitive dissonance that they will get this money “back” at some point doesn’t change that. They are still right on the first point even as they are wrong on the second.

3. “correct, and so they are the classic example of dependency on conspicuous government benefits” Do you believe Romney was referencing a demographic that went for him by 12%? He was talking about how his own base (or lots of it) wouldn’t vote for him? Do you think the people on the “We Are The 53″% tumblr are voicing their resentments of octogenarians who are out there working and paying payroll taxes? I can’t tell you that it is zero, but very much doubt it is very many of them.

4. If they have a car they pay the federal gas tax (a little over 18 cents a gallon.) Still a tax.

“Explain this concept of toxicity? How is it “toxic”? Define a “toxic set of ideas” as you see it.”

The following set of related propositions:

1. That those 47% of tax units who do not have a net income tax liability are dependent and think of themselves as victims.

2. That they re going to vote for Obama.

3. That they cannot be convinced to care for their own lives.

“A majority of that 47% have a net payroll tax liability.”

A -a “net payroll” tax liability isn’t relevant for the following reasons:

1.) The last couple of years not withstanding, payroll taxes are an invariant flat percentage-there’s no argument about “who pays what”, because its usually a fixed amount percentage of income, with no deductions.

2.) Although for a variety of reasons outside the scope of this response that make the perception incorrect, people think their payroll taxes are “premiums” buying them future benefits, in large part due to fraudulent promotion by the federal government. (Early Soc. Security propaganda films explicitly called SS “insurance, bought and paid for”) They are freely available online, don’t believe me, “google it”.

3.) “A majority of the remainder are retired and subsist on their Social Security checks.”- correct, and so they are the classic example of dependency on conspicuous government benefits. Despite having “earned” these benefits, the government reserves the right to change the payout and so, as a group they are exactly the group Baum referred to-supplicants acting in concert to assure their economic well-being first and foremost. Trust me, I had the good fortune of having octogenerian relatives, but they were all victims of policial pavlovian conditioning. The only variable in their voting calculus was “support” for SS. (Even though it was “bought and paid for”.) I see the same thoughts in my clients and advisees.

4.) Outside a few excise fees, there is no “federal consumption tax” and I hope there never is, because it becomes so routine that few people even think about it.

Now, for the income tax, no two taxpayers pay the same thing and many people are net recipients thanks to “refundable credits”. You don’t have to be wholly supported by the government to be a serf, you simply need have something conspicuous, whether it’s foodstamps, college grants, the mortgage interest deduction,industrial grants, favorable regulation, et al., then people for widely disparate and personal reasons simply consent to anything to keep their ox from getting gored.

“a toxic set of ideas”

Explain this concept of toxicity? How is it “toxic”? Define a “toxic set of ideas” as you see it. That might have supreme clarity to you, but to me it says Pete S has an adverse gut reaction.

@ Joseph Marshall

“The notion that there are large numbers of people who live off the government and do nothing when they could be working is a fatuous myth.”

Who asserted that? AB asserted that “the 47% are people who obtain conspicuous and essential support from the government, i.e, their fellow citizens.”

That having been said, I’ve worked in the fiscal end of state government. I spent time as a medicaid/medicare auditor, and these programs encourage loyalty to government, and the politicians that promote such programs and then after creation, the continuation and expansion of these programs. In addition to the recipients- there are those who work in the administration of these programs and their unions, and these folks are employed, but dependent-and your occupational declaration makes it clear who butters your bread.

And this is so despite chronic liberal fantasies (and to be blunt, contemporary “liberalism”, more acccurately called collectivist statism, is a font of fantasies, imperturbably devoted to the idea of the state as a beneficient god, a modern equivalent of the golden calf, that destroys people’s souls, minds and bodies in the pursuit of earthly perfection).

You seem to be terribly upset with this idea “And the burden is on you to prove need.”
Is that so much to ask? Beyond the utter disorder caused by the expection of public support without need, it’s wrong. There’s a whole series of ENTITLEMENTS that are killing the state budgets and are insidiously being used to buy votes by imperial politicians of both parties at the federal level.

The damnable thing about the left is it’s totally devotion to emotion without reason and its (often self-serving) indignity madquerading as advocacy.

I’ve seen the “war on poverty”, who won? Almost fifty years, trillions of dollars and we’re still getting lachrymose accounts from the Joesph Marshalls of the world. Ditto for the “war on drugs”. Yet all we are told is, never question these efforts, no matter how ineffective, inefficient or counterproductive and if you do, you are lack empathy (at best) or are some sort of moral defective lacking in humanity.

The ultimate question is will we be governed with our consent or ruled through dependency. I prefer the latter, but human beings are terribly bad at resisting slavery with a pretty bow on it.

Then again, it simply won’t matter when Treasury auctions have unsold issues, sales at a steep discount, coupon rates that require ever higher risk premiums or are sold only with “default swaps”. I hope the left will be thrilled if we continue to pursue policies to the point we join other great destroyed nations. I suppose their egalatarian obsession will only be met in universal poverty. We know how this ends and the history of the Weimar Republic is instructive in this regard.

“First of all the 47% isn’t about people who “don’t make much money”. The 47% are people who obtain conspicuous and essential support from the government, i.e, their fellow citizens.”

Adam, those 47% are people (really tax units) who have no net income tax liability. A majority of that 47% have a net payroll tax liability. A majority of the remainder are retired and subsist on their Social Security checks. This is to say nothing of the various state and federal consumption taxes they might be paying. So we have tax payers and the retired as over 75% of the 47%. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/the-47-who-they-are-where-they-live-how-they-vote-and-why-they-matter/262506/

“Feudal empires were formed when enterprising people levered better dwellings as havens against marauding invaders-and over time, people surrendered their land, their labor and themselves and children. This tactic is repeated in every “protection” scheme. I remember a grade school teacher, an immigrant from Cuba describing how the civic and political loyalties of children were secured by telling them that if they wanted candy, they should ask God and the state, and you know how that went.”

I’m not aware of any feudal empire in history that came into existence because the second quartile had a payroll tax rather than an income tax liability.

And that is a problem with the whole 47% meme. The 47% becomes a proxy for a whole bunch of resentments and anxieties (including rent-seeking entrepreneurs apparently) that have little to with the reality of who the 47% are and makes it impossible to make sensible distinctions within that group.

“Inartfully said, yes”

No. Romney spoke with supreme clarity. There was none of the implied, passive-aggressive contempt you saw in the We Are The 53% tumblr. I work hard and I don’t take government hand outs, so I’m the 53%. The unsaid: unlike you-know-who. Romney made the subtext into text. The 47% with no income tax liability were looking for government handouts, thought of themselves as victims and who could not be convinced to care for their own lives. Romney wasn’t politic, but he was wonderfully clear in how he communicated a toxic set of ideas. The clarity was the problem.

The notion that there are large numbers of people who live off the government and do nothing when they could be working is a fatuous myth. How do I know this? Because I spend a considerable amount of time in the same government offices they do and I listen very carefully to the people around me as well as to the caseworkers who deal with them. I also have had the misfortune on occasion to go to food pantries and listen to the same sort of folks there.

Most people will work when they can, but certainly accept help when they need it. And, when they are working, they pay taxes. Some even then do not make enough income to pay Federal Income Tax, but they pay plenty of taxes every time they buy goods, or even pay rent, since landlords routinely pass on such costs. Not to mention all the extra taxes on utilities, gasoline, alcohol, and tobacco.

In fact, ordinary people of all types and income levels, employed or not, are the backbone of the state, county, city, and school district funding. You buy anything in your state and you’re part of it.

Moreover, you get help, not a living stipend. There are a number of folks from Ohio here, just like me, so if they have the face to do it, they can take their monthly food bill (less dry goods and alcohol) and divide it by the number of people in their household. Then they can take that number and compare it to $185. I would be willing to bet that the per member cost in their household is around twice that, maybe even 3x that.

Which is why the same people show up in food pantries, usually around the end of the month. For $185 is the ***maximum*** monthly food assistance anyone can receive per person in Ohio. Most people receive much less. It was $200 maximum last year.

To get $185.00 worth of help you have to have no real assets. None. Such things are prorated, reduce your assistance, or keep you from getting help at all. The same is true for virtually every other form of assistance except Medicare, Social Security, and temporary unemployment compensation, where everybody pays premiums or has already paid taxes from having worked, or their former employer has paid such taxes.

The only exceptions in Ohio are the auto you drive to work and your burial insurance. Every last bit of your financial status counts against your receiving assistance of any kind–food, utilities, Medicaid, whatever. And the burden is on you to prove need.

Contrary to Mr. Baum above, nobody “levers” anything to get assistance. The people who get it have nothing left to lever with. The only thing they have left to give up is their privacy.

And, to put matters bluntly for Mr. Baum (or anyone else), if such assistance stopped tomorrow, this country would come apart at the seams. The vast majority of “service” workers everywhere would simply be unable to keep a roof over their heads, avoid hypothermia in winter, or heatstroke in the summer.

Mr. Baum, as everyone here, is one of the people who gets the services at what is unequivocally a bargain rate, impossible to sustain if everyone on assistance goes homeless, starves, dies from exposure, or is killed or crippled by inadequate medical care.

And this is so despite chronic conservative fantasies to the contrary.

The people who get assistance, and who, by the way, work when they can find a job (if they didn’t, they already would be homeless) have the right to vote. The general response of Republican politicians to this is to do everything possible to keep them from voting, instead of seeking to obtain their votes. People who are the target of such shenanigans notice these things. Really.

For reasons such as this, fewer of them were inclined to vote in 20th century elections, but, having been part of two successful Presidential election campaigns, these facts are changing rapidly. The future is in the turnout numbers of the millions of working poor. They’ve been tabulated for all to read, if any choose to.

So you’re quite right. The Great Persuader was called that because he was persuasive, and didn’t preach only to the choir. The continuing antics of current Republican office holders at all levels is nothing even remotely resembling persuasive.

And it had better change.

First of all the 47% isn’t about people who “don’t make much money”. The 47% are people who obtain conspicuous and essential support from the government, i.e, their fellow citizens.

The reason that there is such concern (not contempt) about the 47%, is that some people understand how feudalism and other autocracies developed. Feudal empires were formed when enterprising people levered better dwellings as havens against marauding invaders-and over time, people surrendered their land, their labor and themselves and children. This tactic is repeated in every “protection” scheme. I remember a grade school teacher, an immigrant from Cuba describing how the civic and political loyalties of children were secured by telling them that if they wanted candy, they should ask God and the state, and you know how that went.

Some of us understand that people stripped of their economic independence, and dependent on government are no longer the master of government, and elections are reduced to being, in one man’s cynical words “auctions in advance..”, no sober reflections on the character, credibility and capacity of individuals seeking office.

If everybody is dependent on government, whether it is the woman living in the “projects” with two kids, or the entrepreneur promoting something some politician will sell to the public as an essential “public investment” or worse, cynically using regulation to suppress competition, self government is doomed. It’s just too easy to promote conspicuous benefits and forget the costs. It was just announced that the taxpyer’s “investment” in GM will be a big loss, and yet nobody cares, because it’s a drop in a flood of similar fiscal misadventures.

Given the power of incumbency and the changing demographics, the question isn’t why Romney lost, it’s why didn’t he lose more? Look at 1996. Granted, Dole was a dismal candidate, but his margin of victory was much bigger-379 electoral votes, and 8 plus percent of the popular vote and while Clinton did well with African Americans, Obama received over 95% as I recall.

Inartfully said, yes, but there was no similar reaction to the far more contemptuous remark about “bitter clingers” uttered by Barack Obama and the left rushed to the defense of the indefensible, as they always do.

In another thread (on population) economist Bryan Caplan was cited. He also wrote a book titled “The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies”, and it could have just as well have been subtitled “and why they elect very bad people, narcissists, liars and con artists.

Every day, I walk by a small cafe opposite a state capitol building. When the legislature is in session, there’s men in suits with grey hair and the appearance of sixty year olds. The woman accompanying them are invariably young and attractive. Even if there isn’t the whiff of moral turpitude, I think this is instructive as to the nature of politics and politicians.