Sunday, March 07, 2021

L’appétit vient en mangeant, la soif s’en va en buvant - Biden's stimulus

 "The Tax Policy Center in Washington estimates that the direct payments and expanded tax credits in the bill would, by themselves, increase after-tax income this year by more than 20 percent for an average household in the lowest quintile of income earners in the United States. It previously had forecast that Mr. Trump’s tax cuts would raise that same group’s income by less than 1 percent in the first year."

Start with stuff. The stimulus package, as we know to our sorrow, did not contain the minimum wage increase. What it does contain, though, is a program that is targeted to award those in the lower income and median income percentiles. This should not be cause for trumpets, but it is. Since the turn in the seventies - the cat's foot creep of neoliberalism - the neoliberal consensus shared by both parties has been: millionaires first. On the Dem side, this was the a real break with the Clinto-Obama paradigm. Set the conditions for working class people to actually see government working for them, and you can get working class people "excited" to garner further gains. The illusion that progressives will impose those conditions from the top by force majeure arises from the despair induced by the age of nudgery. This, though, a temporary stimulus, will increase the desire for a structural stimulus. 

L’appétit vient en mangeant, la soif s’en va en buvant, as comrade Rabelais put it.   

1 comment:

Bruce said...

From your fingertips to . . .

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