Amity Shlaes: Election won't prevent pension crash

Amity Shlaes: Election won't prevent pension crash

The 10% President by the WSJ.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444358804578016270614705726.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

It is shocking, but can we really do anything about the "welfare" state, and if so what will replace it?

The fact that roughly half of Americans receive some government payment to which they feel morally entitled is a big part of our budget paralysis. It’s an inconvenient fact, but it’s still a fact.

Dealing with it ought to define the next president’s mission. Somehow, he must question the status quo without insulting the roughly 150 million Americans who receive federal benefits. Who deserves support and why? How much and under what conditions? Unless we ask these questions and find grounds for trimming some benefits, the budget impasse will continue and risk dangerous outcomes: a future financial crisis; crushing tax increases; or draconian cuts in programs (defense, research, highways) that aren’t payments to individuals.

This is arithmetic, as Bill Clinton might say. In 2011, payments to individuals were 65 percent of federal spending, up from 26 percent in 1960. America has created a welfare state, whether Americans admit it or not.

Actually, the share of people who receive federal benefits exceeds Romney’s 47 percent. Based on its Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), the Census Bureau estimates that in mid-2011 — the latest available figures — the number of people with benefits came to 149.8 million, or 49 percent of the population. But this figure is too low, because SIPP doesn’t include several major programs (farm subsidies and college loans and grants). With these, the total probably exceeds 50 percent.  Robert Samuelson.

I have no way of knowing if this is true or not, but I suspect that it is true.

How campaigns try to sway polling results: “In a close race, the operatives are trying to manipulate the turnout through their paid and earned media. The earned media includes lobbying and trying to skew the public polls. Historically the most egregious case was the 2000 Gore campaign’s lobbying the networks’ exit pollsters for an early, and wrong, call in Florida. This suppressed the Florida Panhandle and Western state turnout.” …

What Obama and his allies are doing now: “The Democrats want to convince [these anti-Obama voters] falsely that Romney will lose to discourage them from voting. So they lobby the pollsters to weight their surveys to emulate the 2008 Democrat-heavy models. They are lobbying them now to affect early voting. IVR [Interactive Voice Response] polls are heavily weighted. You can weight to whatever result you want. Some polls have included sizable segments of voters who say they are ‘not enthusiastic’ to vote or non-voters to dilute Republicans. Major pollsters have samples with Republican affiliation in the 20 to 30 percent range, at such low levels not seen since the 1960s in states like Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and which then place Obama ahead. The intended effect is to suppress Republican turnout through media polling bias. We’ll see a lot more of this.

John McLaughlin Republican Pollster.

Media cover for Obama’s failures - Chicago Sun-Times

Media cover for Obama’s failures - Chicago Sun-Times

Thomas Sowell making sense again.

http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2012/09/20/the_fallacy_of_redistribution

The mess we are in!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303561504577497442109193610.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Obama's Auto Fairy Tale

Obama's Auto Fairy Tale

There is a new poll every week, which ones are accurate and which are propaganda?

http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/2008/11/the-list-which-presidential-polls-were-most-accurate/

Good analysis of competing tax plans.

http://taxfoundation.org/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/docs/ff327.pdf

Are you better off?

By most measures the country isn’t making slow progress; it’s falling further behind. Some examples:

• Median incomes: These have fallen 7.3% since Obama took office, which translates into an average of $4,000. Since the so-called recovery started, median incomes continued to fall, dropping $2,544, or 4.8%.

• Long-term unemployed: More than three years into Obama’s recovery, 811,000 more still fall into this category than when the recession ended.

• Poverty: The poverty rate climbed to 15.1% in 2010, up from 14.3% in 2009, and economists think it may have hit 15.7% last year, highest since the 1960s.

• Food stamps: There are 11.8 million more people on food stamps since Obama’s recovery started.

• Disability: More than 1 million workers have been added to Social Security’s disability program in the last three years.

• Gas prices: A gallon of gas cost $1.89 when Obama was sworn in. By June 2009, the price was $2.70. Today, it’s $3.84.

• Misery Index: When Obama took office, the combination of unemployment and inflation stood at 7.83. Today it’s 9.71.

• Union membership: Even unions are worse off under Obama, with membership dropping half a million between 2009 and 2011.

• Debt: Everyone is far worse off if you just look at the national debt. It has climbed more than $5 trillion under Obama, crossing $16 trillion for the first time on Tuesday and driving the U.S. credit rating down.

Ironically, the only people better off under Obama are corporate chieftains, who’ve seen corporate profits climb more than 50% under Obama’s “recovery,” and investors, who’ve benefited from a near-doubling in the Dow industrials from its March 2009 lows.