Third Way's words from 2007 about the middle class...coming back to haunt them?

[madfloridian]

I would say so. The Third Way is part of the trio of centrist think tanks that includes DLC and PPI as well. They are setting the policy for the Democrats.

Some of their words have been sticking in my brain this week. It was a project they did called The New Rules Economy. It was a paper acknowledging the new global economy, and it rather glossed over the damage done to the Middle Class by the new corporate globalism.

Looking back at some of the things they said is enlightening and infuriating. They knew all this was coming and were in denial. Their denial in 2007 was not even credible. One of their goals has been setting out National Security policies...culture projects such as how to handle the abortion issue (appeal to the abortion grey area)...and how to deal with the Middle Class.

Here are some of the words that stuck out at me even in 2007...file is pdf.

Third Way New Rules Economy

Realism means recognizing and understanding the economy’s new rules while
accepting the limits of government’s power to stop the forces of change. But as
progressives, we also believe that government policies—if modernized and adapted
to the rules of the 21st century—can create the optimal conditions for increasing
economic growth, expanding middle-class prosperity and protecting those who fall
behind.

As progressive realists, we do not doubt that change is disruptive and, for many
people, painful. Globalization has made many jobs obsolete, and both companies and
individuals have been hurt by its impact. As the neopopulists note, all is not well with
the middle class. But we also see the current era of change as one of tremendous
opportunity and potential for the middle class.

Maybe after the pain goes away it might be viewed as "opportunity and potential."

In addition, we view the challenges faced by today’s middle class as very different from the ones that most progressives believe them to be. We perceive the middle class
as struggling to get ahead, not—as the neopopulists argue—struggling to get by.
Middle-class anxiety does not stem from broad dissatisfaction with capitalism but
from the shifting terrain beneath their feet and the increasing irrelevance of an
outdated government.

That sounds pretty conservative to me. Almost like Grover Norquist government that has been drowned in the bathtub.

The Middle Class is not struggling to get by? I wonder if they would like to re-address those words today.

Not struggling to get by. Yes, the middle class is struggling to get by. What a thing to say.

Oh, BTW, when they refer to neo-populists...they are talking about us.

Now they are calling us old style left wing "populists" who hate free trade.

This statement from Harold Ford and Al From.

Right-wing populists claim immigrants are stealing Americans' jobs. Left-wing populists say trade is shipping our jobs overseas. Both look backwards toward an allegedly better past and argue that, by sealing our borders and retreating from global markets, government can recover it.

From Will Marshall:

Today's neo-populism has right and left strands. Republican populism is mainly anti-immigration: Think Patrick Buchanan or Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Ariz). Democratic populism, personified by two newly elected Senators, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, is vehemently anti-trade. The two strands converge in the person of CNN blowhard Lou Dobbs, who blames immigrants and corporations for either taking American jobs or sending them overseas.

..."The old populism, after all, was a curious amalgam of cultural reaction and worker-farmer radicalism, mixing calls for important democratic reforms--public regulation of corporations, the progressive income tax, labor union rights, direct election of U.S. Senators--with nutty obsessions like "bimetallism," and nastier tinges of nativism, racism and religious bigotry.

Did you see that? They used Sherrod Brown's name and Bernie Sanders' name in the same paragraph as Lou Dobbs. And yes, it is true. Corporations DID take jobs overseas.

The website Tom Paine covered this issue about that time as well. The author picked up more on the same points.

Third Way, Wrong Direction

The report denies America’s working families have been shortchanged. In doing so, it misrepresents economic reality, undercuts working families and gives comfort to supporters of corporate excess. That makes the Third Way the wrong way. Here are the facts.

..."Denial #1: Family income has not stagnated. The report begins by claiming America’s middle class has been doing well. According to Third Way, incomes for married couple households halfway up the income ladder (the 50th percentile) rose 22 percent between 1979 and 2004. That seems pretty good—except tucked away in a footnote is the fact that adjusting for increased hours worked by wives, income only rose 9 percent. Over a 25-year period that translates into an average increase of about one-third of 1 percent per year—which is not the economy American families once knew.

..."Denial #2: Executive pay is not a problem. Third Way describes the CEO pay explosion as “maddening” but just a “drop in the bucket” and of no major economic consequence. Reality says otherwise, with corporate executive excess now reaching such proportions that it is like a tax on all of us.

Oh my, I wonder if they remember they said that just a couple of years ago. They said: "Executive pay is not a problem." That is just way more than denial.

Denial #3: The trade deficit is not a problem. Third Way casually dismisses the trade deficit as not a cause for concern. The trade deficit has caused job loss, and while it is true that the economy eventually creates new jobs, those replacement jobs tend to pay significantly less. Displaced workers therefore first suffer the injury of unemployment, and then find inferior jobs.

...."Denial #4: There is no household debt or saving problem. Lastly, the report claims families have no debt problem because most debt is mortgage debt. However, data shows that households are paying a record share of income as interest, and debt is at record levels relative to income.

Just two years ago, the group could not possibly have been in that much denial. Therefore they had to be misleading. One possibility is the DC bubble they live in, but that does not excuse this document filled with misleading facts.

They are setting policy for the party, along with the DLC and PPI. They owe it to us not to use comfortable platitudes when it was obvious then how bad things were in our country.

[Jim Sagle]

1. They don't owe us anything. They're paid by Wall Street to mislead and demoralize us.

They do their job well.

[tonysam]

22. Yep. The Financial Elites Have Contaminated BOTH Political Parties.

It's time for our parties to get rid of this cancer on the body politic.

[AdHocSolver]

2. The middle class is being purposely destroyed by the right wing aided by a group of craven Democrats

(snip)
........
Realism means recognizing and understanding the economy’s new rules while accepting the limits of government’s power to stop the forces of change.
........

Reality check: The "new" economic rules were designed by corporate cartels and designed to steal the assets of the middle class. The government wasn't limited in its efforts to stop them. The government happily aided and abetted the corporations to steal our assets.

(snip)
........
Globalization has made many jobs obsolete, and both companies and individuals have been hurt by its impact. As the neopopulists note, all is not well with the middle class. But we also see the current era of change as one of tremendous opportunity and potential for the middle class.
........

Reality check: Globalization hasn't made jobs obsolete. It has merely transferred them from the U.S. to cheap labor sites in Asia. The "opportunity" for the middle class of the "current era of change" is one of chronic economic depression and widespread poverty. Any new jobs created will be shifted to Asia as fast as they are created.

At least 75 percent of the goods and services purchased in the U.S. have to be produced in the U.S. for the economy to be viable. This is not merely desirable, it is a mandatory condition for a viable, sustainable economy. What is not necessary is the survival of any particular corporation no matter how large. The stock market doesn't sustain an economy, it is jobs that make an economy successful.

(snip)
........
We perceive the middle class as struggling to get ahead, not—as the neopopulists argue—struggling to get by.
........

Reality check: The middle class is already farther behind than they were twenty five years ago, and falling behind at an increasing rate.

(snip)
........
Middle-class anxiety does not stem from broad dissatisfaction with capitalism but from the shifting terrain beneath their feet and the increasing irrelevance of an outdated government.
........

Reality check: With the fraud and incompetence paraded before the public daily, the public had better develop some dissatisfaction with unregulated capitalism if it wants to save itself and the country. The problem with the government has not been that it is outdated, but that the government has become so corrupt and incompetent. Some people are starting to see that if we replace the incompetents in government with some truly progressive populists, who will work to save the middle class, rather than aid and abet the corporate crooks, then government won't be "irrelevant" anymore.

(snip)
........
Democratic populism, personified by two newly elected Senators, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, is vehemently anti-trade.
........

Reality check: Not anti-trade. Anti shipping all of our jobs overseas so that we wind up with huge trade deficits, a weakened dollar, and shoddy and dangerous goods.

[madfloridian]

14. I agree.

The Democrats have been complicit in selling out our country to globalism....and these words from Third Way are almost insulting in their pretense of being real. They had to know they were so very wrong two years ago.

[Lasher]

3. Calling themselves progressives and calling us neo-populists.

I think we're populists and they are neo-shitheads.

[madfloridian]

7. Misleading by language. Nothing progressive about them.

That's how they did it when they took over the Democrats in the mid to late 80s. They pretended to be progressives.

[Lasher]

9. A classic exercise in labeling to frame an argument.

I don't like these guys.

[Name removed]

33. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[W_HAMILTON]

4. About the bonuses being a "drop in the bucket..."

$165 million is a drop in the bucket? Why is that argument employed when it comes to the bonuses of fat cats, but not when a company lays off thousands of workers who make nowhere near that amount?

For instance, assuming a lower-rung worker makes $50,000/year, that $165 million in bonuses would have saved over 3,000 jobs. And which do you think is money well spent? $165 million to pay executives that ran your company into the ground, or $165 million to retain 3,000 jobs that help produce or provide service for your product?

Fuck people like that. If $165 million is a "drop in the bucket," then so is the $30,000, or $40,000, or $50,000 yearly salary for the workers continually laid off by these asshole companies.

[Hannah Bell]

5. I read something recently showing that executive labor cost was

a pretty significant fraction of total labor cost for some corps, & reduced profit margins too...maybe on purpose...wish i could find it again.

[Kip Humphrey]

6. Third Way? Fourth Reich is more like it..

[madfloridian]

8. Third Way in 2006: Bankruptcies are rare, majority of Americans have no credit card debt.

And more from Stephen Rose, Third Way economic senior fellow.

Dear Stephen Rose, you certainly did not see the future clearly. Only 3 years ago you should have foreseen our present problems.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId=11943

His premise was way off to begin with.

"Let me take on the three most repeated overstatements about the middle-class "squeeze:" first, that middle-class incomes and standard of living are slipping backward; second, that middle-class families are "drowning in debt;" and third, that employers are abandoning their obligations to provide health and retirement benefits to their workers."

Then it got worse.

" * A majority of Americans have no credit card debt. And of the 46 percent of Americans who do, the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances says the median balance is $2,100. Moreover, Pew surveys from 2004 through 2006 found that only 9 percent of Americans said that they "owed a lot more than they could afford."
* Middle class assets are up. Real median net worth for all households rose from $69,000 in 1989 to $93,000 in 2004 -- an increase of 35 percent.
* Most household debt is mortgage debt. Mortgage debt as a share of total debt has increased from 71 percent in 1989 to 79 percent in 2004. For the vast majority of people, their major source of wealth is equity in their home.
* Bankruptcies are rare. Only 1.5 percent of households declare bankruptcy in any given year."


Whoaa..so much is wrong with that.

[madfloridian]

10. It is almost like they were trying to justify the damage that was on the way.

They had to have known what was in store for our country. It is like they were trying to make things sound ok when they were not.

[derby378]

11. Third Way's policy on the middle class is failing as badly as their gun control policy

They're rapidly becoming irrelevant to the future of the Democratic Party.

[madfloridian]

13. Their views may be irrelevant, but their money and power prevail.

That's the problem.

[imdjh]

31. I think that you are incorrect.

"They're rapidly becoming irrelevant to the future of the Democratic Party."

That's pretty arrogant and in denial of the reality as I see it. President Obama won the Democratic nomination through strategy, not overwhelming support. He won the national election with the support of lots and lots of people who voted for him because the alternative was unacceptable. That's not a blanket endorsement of his first and greatest fans' ideals, nor is it a promise of continued and unalienable support. Things change. Other people have expectations too. Some people were disillusioned on election day. Others have become disillusioned since inauguration. Of course, it's like water, it's hard to tell the difference between what has spilled out and what has taken its place. The Democratic Party is still a coalition of people with a spectrum of wants, needs, and desires. They are not irrelevant.

[madfloridian]

12. David Brooks loved the New Rules Economy report....also dissed "neopopulists"

Which are those of us who see the reality and speak out. From 2007...they were not very prescient about the economy's collapse today.

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/opinion/11brooks.html?_r=1

" Moreover, their living standards are not stagnant. Between 1979 and 2005, the percentage of prime-age households making over $100,000 in current dollars rose by 12.7 percentage points. As Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, said last week, incomes at all levels are rising; it’s just that incomes at the upper end are rising much faster.

The Third Way authors also dispute recent warnings of wildly increasing income volatility. The main reason incomes have grown more volatile over the past decades is motherhood, they write. As women play a more significant role in the economy, their movements in and out of the labor force to care for children increase volatility.

The report goes on to challenge the direst warnings about rising credit card debt (household assets have risen faster than debts), rising corporate profits (they are cyclical and pretty much normal for this stage in a recovery) and American decline.

The Third Way authors are not saying everything is hunky-dory — far from it — but they are saying Democrats tend to lose when they are relentlessly grim and when the reality they describe is detached from the reality most Americans experience.

Moreover, they are restating the truth neopopulists are loath to admit: that no nation on earth is better positioned to take advantage of an ever-more-open economy, and today’s challenge is not to retard openness but enable more people to take part in it."

[LWolf]

15. The PPI is why I prefer to call my self a leftist, rather than a "progressive."

More clear cut and to the point, instead of wallowing around in all of the Orwellian manipulation of "progressive."

I have to say that I have less respect, and more dislike, for dlc/centrist/3rdway/"new" democrats than I do for republicans.

Republicans are the clear-cut opposition. The other? They are the cancer destroying us from the inside out.

I'm more interested in an intensive sequence of chemo to rid the body of the invaders than I am in going after republicans these days. Republicans, at this point, will only thrive if we help them.

[Naturyl]

19. Agreed, I'm coming to that realization as well.

I will no longer be describing myself as "progressive" as a rule.

It's "leftist" for me, too.

[madfloridian]

21. They called us "fringe"...anti-war, activists on any level..fringe.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/62

I am in the middle, and they are far right and moving more that way.

That angered me so much.

[LWolf]

26. There was a time

when I considered myself to be pretty firmly in the middle.

My positions haven't changed any. But these days, the so-called "center" is so far to the right of me that I need binoculars to find them.

[madfloridian]

32. I thought I was "in the middle" ....

until I started paying close attention to politics when they voted to invade Iraq.

I guess I do have moderate views...moderation is a good thing.

BUT they are using the words moderate and progressive to drag us screaming to the right, and I am starting to realize that they have actually turned me into more of a liberal. Because of the Moderate Dems...I am more liberal than before.

Yet, I am pretty much the same as ever.

[Romulox]

16. Austan Goolsby, the PPI's chief economist, was on TV speaking on behalf of the Obama admin this week

:hi:

[madfloridian]

17. Correct me, but isn't he one who wants to privatize Social Security?

I may be wrong...will look it up tomorrow. Too late right now.

[tonysam]

23. Yep. He's a one of the "Chicago School Boys."

These people need to get out of our government. Their political philosophy is what is ruining the world's economy.

[madfloridian]

25. Can't find an article I was looking for.

So not sure about him.

[Leopolds Ghost]

20. He was the one who promised Canada that Obama's trade talk was all smoke & mirrors

To pacify the unions.

And sure enough, I saved an article from last month about Obama's pledge to use **Executive Orders** to eliminate "Buy American" provisions from the stimulus bill. He said "Buy American" was protectionist.

[Naturyl]

18. I don't view the middle class as "struggling to get by."

I view THE POOR as struggling to get by.

But the poor simply do not exist for these Third Way centrists. Hell, the poor barely exist for "liberals" and "progressives" anymore.

The middle class may be struggling to maintain a certain standard of living. That I will concede. That standard of living, however, has always been well above "just getting by" and remains so.

[madfloridian]

27. In this economy, there are only a few not struggling.

I don't know the exact line for being considered middle class...but I know that people are struggling and living in fear of losing their jobs.

They are not as the Third Way says...striving to "get ahead". They are mostly trying to hold their heads above water.

People who thought they were well prepared for retirement are finding otherwise. It's a scary time.

They predicted too rosy an outlook in trying to make their policies look good.

[Brucie Kibbutz]

29. They're just now starting to see what it's like

for the rest of us day in, day out, year round. I know it must suck for people to lose so much on their 401k's but many of us never had any of that to begin with. We will be working until the day we die.

[madfloridian]

35. You seem to be taking pleasure in the suffering of others.

I doubt that is the lesson to be learned from these tragedies.

[imdjh]

30. I don't think there is one

"I don't know the exact line for being considered middle class."

Income wise, I am probably legally poor. Assets wise, I'm probably middle class. I'm not one paycheck away from undeniable poverty, but I am about two years away from it if I don't start doing somethings differently. Anyway, I don't think that middle class means anything. Nearly everyone identifies as middle class. The only people who identify as poor, are either undeniably poor or working it as a political angle, and the only people who identify as rich are the ones who simply can't get away with calling themselves middle class.

[Brucie Kibbutz]

28. All you ever hear about is the middle class.

Any time the lower economic class is mentioned, it's almost always talked about as if that class is nothing but freeloaders just sitting around waiting for a handout. Despite our high productivity in return for less pay, we're still treated as if we're nothing but a drain on the economy.

The focus is always on the "family unit" and how we can help them invest and send their kids to college. In the meantime, people are having to decide between keeping the lights turned on or buying groceries.

BTW, don't anybody take this as us wanting something for free. We don't want anything for free. We want decent compensation in return for our hard work.

[madfloridian]

24. More about the authors of that article.. and Third Way leadership

These folks authored this policy:

"Author: Anne Kim, Adam Solomon, Bernard L. Schwartz, Jim Kessler and Stephen Rose :

Here's the management team:

http://third-way.com/leadership

The trustees:

http://third-way.com/leadership/trustees

And the honorary Senate chairs

http://third-way.com/leadership/honorary_chairs

And the honorary House chairs.

http://www.thirdway.org/leadership/house_chairs

[slipslidingaway]

34. kick n/t