The Conservative Nanny State... How the wealthy use the government to stay rich and get richer

[RedEarth]

Dean Baker: "The Conservative Nanny State"
t r u t h o u t | Release



How the wealthy use the government to stay rich and get richer.

Washington, DC: In his new book, "The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer," well-known economist Dean Baker debunks the myth that conservatives favor the market over government intervention. The book examines a variety of "nanny state" policies that make the rich richer while leaving most Americans worse off. Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, candidly rejects current political truisms, proposes alternatives, and encourages readers to openly debate the way forward.

To download a free electronic copy of book, visit: www.conservativenannystate.org.

By distributing the book online at no cost, Baker hopes to spark public debate about the most effective mechanism for supporting the writing and designing of books and other forms of intellectual work. Paperback copies are available for a fee that covers printing and shipping costs.

Book Excerpt

"The key flaw in the stance that most progressives have taken on economic issues is that they have accepted a framing whereby conservatives are assumed to support market outcomes, while progressives want to rely on the government. This framing leads progressives to futilely lash out against markets, rather than examining the factors that lead to undesirable market outcomes. The market is just a tool, and in fact a very useful one. It makes no more sense to lash out against markets than to lash out against the wheel." (Excerpted from Preface)

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The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer
Published by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, DC.
Creative Commons (cc) 2006
ISBN: 978-1-4116-9395-1

Dean Baker is a macroeconomist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He is co-author of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (with Mark Weisbrot, University of Chicago Press, 1999), co-author of The Benefits of Full Employment (with Jared Bernstein, Economic Policy Institute, 2004), and author of The History of the United States Since 1980 (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2006). He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. His blog, Beat the Press, provides commentary on economic reporting < http://beatthepress.blogspot.com >.

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/60/19795

What people are saying about The Conservative Nanny State

“Here is the brutal truth, exposed systematically, methodically, unsparingly. Forget the pork rinds and the hokey Texas twang: Conservative government is government by and for the upper class.”

-- Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America

“Dean Baker is one of the most insightful and original economists in Washington. With this book, he exposes the prevailing myth of modern conservatives. They are not for limited government, as they claim. Rather, they are for a government that helps their own. Baker says it is time to balance the books. Government is by all the people, for all the people. It's that simple.”

-- Jeff Madrick, author of Why Economies Grow: The Forces That Shape Prosperity and How We Can Get Them Working Again

“There’s a new book from Dean Baker available as a free PDF download or in paperback if you're so inclined. It's fantastic…. It would be a wonderful thing to start getting attention to some of the issues he raises. At the end of the day, the current Democratic agenda of raising the minimum wage and re-establishing pay-as-you-go budget rules is a bit unambitious.

-- Matthew Yglesias, The American Prospect

To download a free electronic copy of book, visit:

http://www.conservativenannystate.org/


The Welfare Kings
By Dean Baker
TomPaine.com

Wednesday 10 May 2006

At a time when tens of millions of workers are struggling to pay for gas for their car, electricity for their home, and medical care for their families, the Republicans have stepped forward with a plan to help. They want to give another $20 to $30 billion in tax cuts to the rich.

This temporary assistance to the needy rich (TANR) takes the form of a 2-year extension of a tax cut that made the maximum tax rate on stock dividends and capital gain income 15 percent. While tens of millions of ordinary workers pay income tax rates of 25 percent on their wages, the Republicans argue that Bill Gates and his billionaire friends shouldn't have to pay taxes at more than a 15 percent rate. Most of this tax break goes to the richest 1 percent of the population. This is because they hold most of the country's stock - and even when middle income people hold stock, it is usually in retirement accounts, which are not affected by this tax cut.

The Republicans don't argue that rich people should pay lower tax rates just because they are rich. Republicans - and many Democrats - argue that rich people should pay lower tax rates because they get their income from owning stock instead of working for a living. They argue that taxing income from stock is morally wrong because it is "double taxation." They also argue that it is bad for the economy. Neither claim makes much sense.

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/60/19696/printer

.........see also..........

Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You with the Bill)

Economic figures show that in 2005, the wealthiest 0.1 percent of the country’s population had nearly as much income as all 150 million Americans who make up the lower economic half of the country. Of each dollar people earned in 2005, the top ten percent got 48.5 cents, the highest percentage since 1929, just before the Great Depression.


AMY GOODMAN: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston has been closely tracking the nation’s income gap in the pages of the New York Times. In 2004, he published the bestselling book Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich—and Cheat Everybody Else. David Cay has just published a new book. It’s called Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You with the Bill). He joins us now from the PBS station WXXI in Rochester.


Welcome to Democracy Now!, David.


DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Thank you for having me, Amy and Juan.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain the wealth transfer.


DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, I was struck, listening to the program from Kenya, where they talked about the president and his power to give money to people, give land, and that’s why many people identify with it. We have created in the United States, largely in the last thirty years, a whole series of programs—a few of them explicit, many of them deeply hidden—that take money from the pockets of the poor and the middle class and upper middle class and funnel it to the wealthiest people in America. And among the biggest recipients of these subsidies are the wealthiest family America, the Waltons; George Steinbrenner; Donald Trump; a whole host of healthcare billionaires. And these are policies that either have not been reported on or the news reporting on them generally has not informed people about what they really are.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/18/free_lunch_how_the_wealthiest_americans

[ursi]

1. I spent the past 18 years living in a rural western state region full of GOPers

who hate the federal government but they are the first ones to belly up to the public trough for jobs, kickbacks, subsidies, public land, etc. etc.

The hypocrisy never ceased to amaze me.

[malakai2]

2. I've watched the same for three years

There will not be a fourth.

[water]

3. This is exactly what turned me from the Republican Party.

They have the guts to accuse the Democrats of doing EXACTLY what they do!