Thom Hartmann: First of all, let me give you the list of the polls. I’m going to run through all the names and then I’m going to run through the percentages, very quickly. Because it’s just like this blinding list. This is, I believe I originally saw this at DailyKos and the list itself is posted over at CapitalGainsAndGames.com on Bruce Bartlett’s blog. And the polls are from, the question, here’s the question.
Should the budget deficit be reduced with spending cuts alone or should there be some increase in taxes? To cut the budget deficit, should we raise taxes or should it just be spending cuts? And the polls were conducted over the last couple of months by Gallup, CNN, McClatchy, New York Times, CBS, CNN, Ipsos Reuters, Rasmussen, CNN, Washington Post, ABC News, NBC News, Wall Street Journal, CBS News, Quinnipiac, Gallup, Washington Post, Ipsos Reuters, Bloomberg, Ipsos Reuters, Gallup, USC Los Angeles Times, New York Times, CBS News, Washington Post, ABC News, and three of those, on different dates.
So in that order, that I just read, these are, this is basically, every poll that has ever asked this question. Keep in mind, the gang of 12, this is going to be the big issue. Do we cut the deficit by raising taxes on millionaires, billionaires and corporations, back to where they were like during the Clinton years maybe, or during the Reagan, before Reagan’s, you know in the first year of the Reagan administration, before Reagan started slashing taxes? Or do we cut more money from grandma and poor people? And orphaned kids or abused kids. Because that’s basically what they’re up to.
Here are the percentages that said increase taxes to cut the deficit. Don’t cut spending, increase taxes. This is the percentage that said to do that, of this list that I just read you, in the same order. I know you don’t remember it but you can kind of get a vague recollection of it. 66%, 63%, these are the people who say raise taxes. 66%, 63%, 68%, 63%, 60%, 68%, 56%, 64, 66, 62, 69, 67, 73, 61, 59, 64, 61, 76, 62, 66, 66, 62, 67, 62, 65. You notice none of them went below, I mean the lowest was 56% and that was a Rasmussen poll, which is notoriously Republican. Basically they just poll Republicans, to a large extent. I mean that’s the one that’s always quoted on Fox News. All the rest of them were 60% or above. Balance the budget by raising taxes.
The percentage of people in these same polls who said just do spending cuts, don’t raise any taxes whatsoever. 33%, 36%, 29%, 34%, 40%, there we are with Rasmussen again, 19%, 34, 34, 32, 27, 28, 25, 20, 37, 30, 26, 33, 27, 20, 33, 19, 36, 31, 36, and 30. In other words, about a third of Americans say, yeah cut the spending. And who knows what they’re thinking. I mean there’s a lot of people who if you ask them that question they’re thinking yeah stop the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, cut the spending. But about a third of Americans are saying cut the spending. And clearly, 2/3 to 3/4 of Americans are saying don’t cut any spending, raise taxes. These are just the simple numbers.
And now we look at the income, the campaign contributions, to the gang of 12 and over the last decade they’ve received 11 million dollars, according to a story over at RawStory.com right now. They’ve received over 11 million dollars over the last decade from the banking industry. So I don’t think we’re going to see that 15% maximum income tax rate that banksters pay going up any day soon. Well maybe we will, who knows. I mean hope springs eternal, right? Four major banks giving millions to the gang of 12? Goldman Sachs and their big time?
Meanwhile Rick Perry says oh yeah Texas has been a miracle. Middle class political economist blog, MiddleClassPoliticalEconomist.blogspot.com, has a great piece on this. Just breaking it out. In some parts quoting Paul Krugman and others you know, other stats, points out, “Texas has a significantly higher unemployment rate than Massachusetts, 8.2 versus 7.6%." Wait a minute, Massachusetts is doing better than Texas? I thought Massachusetts was Tax-achusettes. I thought it was a horrible place to live. They’ve got all kinds of regulations, they’ve got taxes, they’ve got building codes. They’ve got zoning, I mean stuff you don’t find in Texas. They have an income tax in the state, they don’t have that in Texas.
Okay, let’s compare them. Massachusetts has a better unemployment rate, it’s only 7.6%, Texas 8.2%. Percentage of people without health insurance, 5% in Massachusetts, thanks to RomneyCare, 26% in Texas.
Over a quarter of the state has no access to healthcare insurance, or has no health insurance. 10% of people in Massachusetts live in poverty, which is pretty grim, but still, 10%, that’s below the national average. Texas 15.8%.
Per capita income. What’s the average income? Personal per capita income. The average per person in the work force. Per capita income. Texas? 37 thousand and change, 37,774. Massachusetts, 51 thousand. Hm, people are doing well in Massachusetts. But they’ve got taxes, they’ve got high taxes. Which makes my point by the way that when taxes go up, wages go up. Because take home pay has to remain the same. This is David Ricardo’s iron law of wages, basically. People work for what they take home at the end of the day. Now this doesn’t apply to rich people, you raise their taxes, it takes more money out of their Swiss bank account, you cut their taxes, they put more money in their Swiss bank account. It doesn’t affect their, it does affect their take home pay but it doesn’t affect their willingness to work for a particular wage. But for working people, taxes go up, wages go up, and you can just clearly see this by looking at tax tables versus wage tables for the bottom 80% over the last 100 years in the United States. We’ve done entire shows on this so I won’t belabor it.
Infant mortality rate, in Texas, 6.2 out of every 1000 live births the kid dies. In Massachusetts it’s only 4.8%. That might have something to do with the fact that there are twice as many doctors in Massachusetts per hundred thousand population as there are in Texas. Not a lot of doctors want to practice in Texas. Of course, in Texas they’ve got that so-called tort reform, where you can, the most you can sue a doctor for is a quarter million dollars, even if he screws up your kid so that he’s in a wheelchair and drooling for the rest of his life and it’s going to cost millions to care for him. The most you can get is a quarter million dollars in Texas. Still, for every hundred thousand people there’s twice as many doctors in Massachusetts as in Texas.
Violent crimes? Massachusetts is doing better than Texas. Lower rate of violent crimes. Number of people working at or below the minimum wage. At or BELOW the minimum wage. In Texas it’s 9.6%. In Massachusetts it’s 3%. And just to throw in, as MiddleClassPoliticalEconomist.blogspot.com points out, for good measure, the divorce rate in Massachusetts, well in Texas it’s 3.6%. That’s where Rick Perry’s holding his prayer rally, yeah, 3.6%, that’s the divorce rate. In Massachusetts, 2.2%.
"To sum up," writes MiddleClassPoliticalEconomist, in Texas you’re five times more likely to be uninsured than in Tax-achusetts, 50% more likely to live in poverty, three times as likely to make the minimum wage or below, 1/3 less likely to have a bachelor’s degree, and your household median income is 15 thousand dollars a year lower in Texas. Yeah that’s what we need. Another Texas governor as President.
Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.
