Allow me to translate:  

>>The fact is that the economy is in such terrible shape that, if there are "pragmatic ideas that bring hope and change to life," they are contradictory and, in any case, most unlikely to work. Which is why one chooses the candidate whose instincts one trusts.<<

Obama and McCain are liars.  You vote for the liar you suspect is hiding the truth you like.

>>So what's relevant on domestic issues is this: Republicans are indifferent to families that make, say, $150,000 or less--although many of such families vote for the G.O.P. for other reasons. I'd bet that not many Republican office holders know many families that make $150,000 or less and almost none who make less than $30,000.<<

Don't even allow for the possibility Republicans might wrongfully, but honestly, believe in their economic policies.  On economics they're kowtowing-to-the-rich bastards.  BUT...

>>They've handed us, the Americans, and our democratic friends not a sock in the jaw but a direct blow to the solar plexus.<<

Never mind that kumbaya stuff that precedes this line, you can trust the GOP more on foreign policy.

>>" Ten words would be a lie, and so, too, a hundred words. "<<

Ten thousand words would be a lie, because as I just told you, they are lying.  

Obama needs to create a product that's relevant.

What these Democrats are asking for is a new New Deal that does bring a measure of hope into the lives of the hardpressed. Not all of Roosevelt's measures worked either, but some of them have stuck around to this day (Social Security, deposit insurance, etc.). As for foreign policy, it would a mistake for the Democratic leadership to think that our disapproval of Bush's incompetence and mendacity means that we don't share his stated goal of national security. I say "stated" because Bush invariably gave it a backseat to business as usual on his list of priorities.

He could learn to just say no to environmentalists and promise wider exploitation of our energy resources.

We have enough oil, coal, uranium and thorium to power civilization cheaply for literally millions of years, yet the Democratic party has found itself allied with the viscously unscientific green movement that even unto today is hawking its latest millenarian scare stories.

Has anyone noticed that not a single one of the environmentalists millenarian themes has ever come true?

ctulhu2008, hey, I have so beach front property on Kiribati I would love to sell you, never mind that it will be underwater in 10 years, you can just pretend the reality is not there. I can actually show you how literally many, many predictions have come true, but I guess science is your enemy, you will simply point out the most outlandish environmental prediction and apply it to every environmentalist at all times.

McCain and his government by anecdote and Republican government by slogan has done us really well the past 8 years.

Come on Lymon, Republicans know their policies are horseshit, they simply don't care. Their number one goal is to unrich themselves, and since Jesus now says it is ok (the prosperity Gospel crowd) they can have their cake and eat it to. Come on, Cheney and his "reagan said deficits don't matter" wasn't talking financial but political truths.

I don't think McCain is a liar, I just think he applies his own life experience to all aspects of government. The whole "my father told me to never take a handout no matter what, because it is bad for one's character, therefore handouts are bad no matter what" theory of governing. Is that a lie? No, it is just black and white.

cthulthu2008 asks:

-- Has anyone noticed that not a single one of the environmentalists millenarian themes has ever come true?

Any thoughts on Easter Island.

Martin Peretz writes:

-- a top Soviet, no, Russian general has threatened both Poland and the Czech Republic with nuclear attack if they join the western anti-missile system.

If there is anyone in Poland or the Czech Republic who had not assumed they would die in the first few hours of a World War 3, whose principal battlefied was their backyard, they would have been an idiot.

Obama will make a fine president someday, assuming he can get up to speed over the next several years on E European and Russian realpolitik. Maybe in 2012, maybe in 2016.

jack I wrote about W. here.

blogs.tnr.com/.../gori-is-guernica.aspx

Jack check this out: blogs.tnr.com/.../gori-is-guernica.aspx

ndmackenzie said:  'cthulthu2008 asks:

-"Has anyone noticed that not a single one of the environmentalists millenarian themes has ever come true?"

Any thoughts on Easter Island.'

Easter Island another cause celbre for the moonbats. Here is some history:

en.wikipedia.org/.../Easter_Islands

"I'd bet that not many Republican office holders know many families that make $150,000 or less and almost none who make less than $30,000."

To know and to care are two different thngs.

To do something to help these folk is something else, again.

cthulhu2008:

"Has anyone noticed that not a single one of the environmentalists millenarian themes has ever come true?"

Um, actually no.  Would you care to elaborate?  And try to stick to predictions that had actual peer reviewed support, not just some extreme theory that basically no-one thought the data supported.

Like Blackton, I could list a very large number of predictions that have come true, but I'm interested in your list.

Well said, Mr Peretz.  Even so, I suspect that Obama is aware that many Americans are stupid enough to vote for John McCain, and that he should try to speak to them in language they will understand.  Abraham Lincoln's oratorical gifts were not limited to lofty, poetic rhetoric but could also be expressed in homespun humor, apt analogies, and simple stories that plain folks understood.  Obama needs to use these tools if he doesn't intend to cede the dim-witted to the GOP.

Neil

Nari,

millenarian themes are not the same as predictions. Go,  learn the difference.

purcellneil, I am one of those stupid Americans ready to vote for McCain.

Lincoln + Obama? That's quite a stretch. I'm not stupid enough to believe that, though.

I sincerely doubt many Democratic office holders, at least on a national level, hang out with families making less than $30,000 a year either.  

And how many Democratic Congressmen know families that earn less than 30k?    It certainly is possible to find a number of both Republican and Democratic Congressmen who come from modest means,  but they may be a shrinking portion of both parties.    

It is at least as bad to assume Republicans hate the poor as it is to assume that Democrats hate the rich (although some left-wing rhetoric certainly sounds that way).

lymon1  

I know my question may seem stupid, but don't you think your family income ceiling of $150K is too low?   A firmeman and a legal secratary can pull in $150K. It's not poverty but I don't think the are the GOP's kind of people. They are the people the GOP gull into thinking it cares about them, but the party never seems to get truly exercised until policies affecting individuals and families earning in the high six-figures (e.g., $800K +) come into play.

One reason for my opinion is the GOP's behavair vis-a-vis the Alternative Minimum Tax. The party was in power since 1996 (?) and did nothing to stop tentacles of the AMT from reaching farther and farther down the income scale an deeper into upper middle-class territory. (That the Democrats did use that fact as a cudgel against the GOP demonstatres just how pathetic they are on the strategy and tactics score.)

However, the estated tax, was repealed (albeit by means of a transitory voodoo procedure) in short order soon after Bush entered office.  if you recall, even the American Farm Bureau couldn't produce any evidence of a family farmer losing his/her farm as a result of the estate tax. In fact, the CBO reports that in the year 2000, at an exemption level of $2.0 million, only 123 farm estates and only 135 family-owned businesses nationwide would have owed any estate tax.  That's a lot of effort to repeal a tax that is owed by only 2 percent of the esates in this country. Meanwhile, the AMT marchs on.

So, raise that income ceiling. I don't think the GOP gives a shit about haute bourgeoisie. Well, except for ow to trick them into supporting the party.

tec, what does the trick consist of?  How is it that the GOP, populated by idiots, are able to consistently "trick" people making $150,000 a year to vote, according to you, entirely against their interests?

What's the line that turns 'em?

jacksondyer: Thanks, but I am familiar with the Millenarianism.

It does appear however that yourself and Cthulu are confused about it's distinction from the predictions made by a well supported scientific theory (and here I'm using theory in it's actual meaning rather than as as synonym for "wild guess").

As for Cthulu's blanket statement ("not a single one") regarding environmental millenarian themes, that tends to ignore that many previous strong predictions about catastrophic changes have been averted by people paying attention to the science and changing their behavior. CFCs Aerosols come to mind as a good example of that (time in the sun wouldn't be so fun if we had continued to pump them into the atmosphere).  

That there are fringe environmentalists who are complete nutjobs who tend to make extreme predictions not supported by any data is something I imagine neither of us would dispute.  However some of the more extreme predictions are currently being made by very level headed people (even ones who don't need additional grant money!).    And so to blithely lump them together makes about as much sense as me observing that the conspicuous repeated failure of the world to end as prophesied in numerous religious texts (real millenarian themes!) and by numerous practitioners over the years means that everyone should abandon their religion tomorrow.

butcchie: Was it P.T. Barnum who quipped about suckers being born every minute? Q.E.D. :-)

I didn't equate Obama to Lincoln - I only suggested that the gift of eloquence is no barrier to plain-spoken political rhetoric.  I suggested that Obama might do well to try to emulate Lincoln in this manner.  I think it is a mistake to think that the only choice is between McCain's simple-mindedness and Obama's nuanced windiness -- if you really understand something, you can make a child understand it.  

Just to respond to the title, you do in fact see Republicans do this to their own.  See, e.g. blogs.tnr.com/.../gordon-smith-out-gordon-smithed.aspx

Tom Davis has also been extremely critical of the current Republican establishment.  And the Coulter/Limbaugh crowd spent a whole lot of time trying to rip McCain to shreds.  Coulter even said she'd campaign for Hillary if it ended up being Hillary vs. McCain.  Plus there are those Republican Obama supporters you mentioned a few days ago (Hauser, Chafee, etc.).

All that said, I'm not sure why these guys felt that the best way to voice their concerns to the Obama campaign was to go to do so in a New York Times article.  And honestly, they must have stopped listening ages ago.  To come away from Obama's recent stump speeches and say that he was just offering vague notions of hope and change, you'd have to ignore most of what he actually said.

"... if you really understand something, you can make a child understand it."

Sorry, Neil, there is such a thing as a child's brain.

Children are not ready to understand events such as death, loss, and abandonment. The best you can do with there is offer comfort and affection.

Likewise children are not ready to understand complicated life issues and intellectual conundrums.

Hence it's not true that if "you really understand something, you can make a child understand it."  There is a reason why there is an age of consent and not just in sexual matters.

Besides voters are not children and shouldn't be treated as such.

“It does appear however that yourself and Cthulu are confused about it's distinction from the predictions made by a well supported scientific theory…” Nari224

You seem confused about the nature of scientific theory.

Scientific theories need double blind studies and they need to be verified and replicated by other scientific experiments.

Predictions are singular events that cannot be replicated or studied.

You can say that according to scientific data such an eclipse of the sun will occur at such and such a time, but that’s only true because science had in the past observed and studied the nature of eclipses.

As far as global warming goes scientists disagree both on whether or not its occurring as well as on its causes.

I happen to think that global warming is probably a reality, but I am not sure how much of it ought to be attributable to human behavior and how much to natural phenomenon.

Check this out:

Volume 55, Number 10 • June 12, 2008

“The Question of Global Warming” By Freeman Dyson

www.nybooks.com/.../21494

A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies

by William Nordhaus

Yale University Press, 234 pp., $28.00

Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto

edited by Ernesto Zedillo

Yale Center for the Study of Globalization/Brookings Institution Press, 237 pp., $26.95 (paper)

"Prof. Dyson is best known for demonstrating in 1949 the equivalence of the formulations of quantum electrodynamics that existed by that time -- Richard Feynman's diagrammatic path integral formulation and the operator method developed by Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. A by-product of that demonstration was the invention of the Dyson series[8].

Another seminal work by Dyson came in 1966 when, together with A. Lenard and independently of Elliott H. Lieb and Walter Thirring, he proved rigorously that the exclusion principle plays the main role in the stability of bulk matter [9]. Hence, it is not the electromagnetic repulsion between electrons and nuclei that is responsible for two wood blocks that are left on top of each other not coalescing into a single piece, but rather it is the exclusion principle applied to electrons and protons that generates the classical macrosopic normal force. In condensed matter physics, Dyson also did studies in the phase transition of the Ising model in 1 dimension and spin waves[10]

Dyson also did work in a variety of topics in mathematics, such as topology, analysis, number theory and random matrices.[10]

From 1957 to 1961 he worked on the Orion Project, which proposed the possibility of space-flight using nuclear pulse propulsion. A prototype was demonstrated using conventional explosives, but a treaty which he was involved in and supported, banned the testing of nuclear weapons other than underground, and this caused the project to be abandoned.

In 1958 he led the design team for the TRIGA, a small, inherently safe nuclear reactor used throughout the world in hospitals and universities for the production of isotopes...."

en.wikipedia.org/.../Freeman_Dyson

"Scientific theories need double blind studies and they need to be verified and replicated by other scientific experiments.

Predictions are singular events that cannot be replicated or studied."

A double blind study seems a bit excessive when your don't even have living subjects.   Are global temperatures vulnerable to the placebo effect?  That's also a very narrow definition of the word "prediction" that fits with neither common usage nor scientific usage (there's a reason scientists make such a big thing out of a theory's having "testable predictions").

Other than the terminology though, you raise some interesting points about the nature of science.  One of the major problems with studies of large-scale natural phenomena is that you can't really do experiments in the sense of studies where you have some sort of experimental intervention and a control group.  Such experiments, when possible, are the ideal way to do science, since they allow causal inferences.

The problem is that we can't go around applying experimental treatments and having "control planets" that are just like Earth, but without all those greenhouse-gas spewing humans.  Similarly, astrophysicists have a complete inability to do actual experiments with the objects they study (basically the only thing we can do to stars is look at them and for black holes, we can't even do that).

So should scientists in such fields proceed?  Throwing your hands up and saying that any conclusions are impossible because of the inherent limitations seems like a less than ideal solution.

Typo correction: the 1st sentence of the last paragraph should read: "So how should scientists in such fields proceed?"

"So should scientists in such fields proceed?  Throwing your hands up and saying that any conclusions are impossible because of the inherent limitations seems like a less than ideal solution." AlanSP

Read Freeman Dyson's account, he offers some excellent suggestions.

"So should scientists in such fields proceed?  Throwing your hands up and saying that any conclusions are impossible because of the inherent limitations seems like a less than ideal solution."

For my part, I wouldn't say that any conclusions are impossible. Rather I would say that we need to make sure the conclusions reached are accurate otherwise we may do more harm to both the environment as well as society than good.

As it is saving the environment is going to be cost free and as Dyson showed it's the people in the poorest countriest who will bear the cost.

"Rather I would say that we need to make sure the conclusions reached are accurate otherwise we may do more harm to both the environment as well as society than good."

I would second the value of correct argument and conclusions, but one of the greatest challenges posed anthropogenic global climate change is that we lack the ability to make correct, detailed predictions in many important areas.  We can certainly predict that, other factors held constant, rising concentrations of greenhouse gases will increase heat trapping, and thus global temperature.  There has been little scientific debate about that for decades.  All of the debate is whether there are offsetting phenomenon that will nullify the affect of this "greenhouse effect."

For many years after the basic explanation of the greenhouse a century ago, science collectively believed that the oceans would absorb with impunity the CO2 emitted by humanity, and sequester it the deep oceans.  Only in the last 4 or 5 decades has it been fully understood that while the oceans are capable of absorbing all the CO2 we put in the air, the are not capable of transporting into the deep ocean rapidly enough, and so they re-release most of what they can absorb.  Thus falls one potential offset.

There are others: cloud cover, increased plant growth, etc.  But the singular fact remains that the equation offered by JacksonDyer here is actually inverted.  We have confirmable predictions of what CO2 in the atmosphere does; we lack comfirmable predictions of whether other phenomenon will offset that.  So the policy question is whether we wait to disprove all the possible offsets, or enough of them to confirm that warming will occur, or do we accept that our inability to be certain on these points justifies near-term response?  Note again that these offsets are hypotheses, the correctness of which, we are betting the future of the climate on, should we choose not to act against greenhouse gas emissions.  That is worth a deep thought by all those who argue that we ought not act because global warming is presently hypothetical.  They literally have it backwards.

Dyson is silent on this question.  He implicitly assumes that the offsets will not offset, and pins his hopes on genetic engineering saving the day.  I rather think that in the big picture he's right - genetically engineered plants of one form or another will be a big part of the future energy picture, and will assist in reducing or eliminating anthropogenic CO2 contributions.  But based on what we know and can do right now, this is just another of those hypothetical offsets.

I have concluded some time ago that there is a lot of wishful thinking in the various "offset" hypotheses, and that improving models are bearing this out.  Others' mileage will vary, of course, but it's a big bet they place on their hypotheses.

"Dyson is silent on this question.  He implicitly assumes that the offsets will not offset, and pins his hopes on genetic engineering saving the day." sdemuth

I don't know whart he "implicitly assumes," but I wouldn't be surprised if his motto were "first do no harm."

jacksondyer:

"You seem confused about the nature of scientific theory.

Scientific theories need double blind studies and they need to be verified and replicated by other scientific experiments. "

Actually, you still appear to be the one who is confused.  Specifically, it sounds like you are confusing the theory, for which an experiment can be designed, with a specific form of the experimental process (double blind).

Double blind studies are a highly objective and useful tool for hypotheses that can be so testing (pharmaceuticals, forensics etc).  However, unless you have a second planet (or universe) handy, you can't use double blind experiments to support or disprove a wide range of natural science theories.  

i.e. from Wikipedia:

"In science a theory is a testable model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise verified through empirical observation."  A theory obviously also needs to be falsifiable through experimentation.

Re your comment "As far as global warming goes scientists disagree both on whether or not its occurring as well as on its causes.".  

Who is disagreeing that the globe is getting warmer?  People who just choose to ignore the overwhelming data?  Even global warming deniers have moved to disputing the level of anthropomorphic contribution.  Which is, to be fair, a much more valid area of dispute.

'I don't know whart he "implicitly assumes," but I wouldn't be surprised if his motto were "first do no harm."'

It's clear in the NYRB piece what he assumes - namely that a "backstop" is needed, but that we shall soon have one in the form of "genetically engineered carbon eating trees."  No one who has followed Dyson's distinguished career would be remotely surprised by this, as he has a long track record of pithily dismissing technologies he (often rightly) does not favor, as when he points out  "the misguided efforts that are now being made to reduce carbon emissions by growing corn and converting it into ethanol fuel,"  or when he described efforts at the Princeton Plasma Physics lab on controlled fusion to me as "that foolish monstrosity over in the plasma lab," in reference to the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor there.  Conversely, he can be passionately in favor of "silver bullet" technologies he believes in.  As befits a man of great intellectual power, he holds his opinions on complex subjects deeply.

More to the point though,  "first do no harm," is the hardest possible dictum to follow in the case of anthropogenic climate change.  As I argue above, a coherent observer, unless they are prepared to ignore fundamental physics that we know works, has to acknowledge that we are already doing harm, except under an assumption that either some offsetting phenomenon we don't fully understand is going to bail us out, or that significant warming is itself harmless.   Because, again, the uncertainty in our understanding of climate change is not on the core proposition that CO2 and other greenhouse gases trap heat,, nor, given the Keeling record, whether CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing roughly as predicted.  The uncertainty is in understanding what happens in the climate system because of those phenomenon, and how damaging that may be.

This is a case where judgments need to made,and will be made, on imperfect understanding.  Doing nothing while we wait for better science and data is a judgment with risks every bit as large as many of the proposed remediations.

It's kind of impossible for obama to spell out exactly how he plans to improve people's lives because he has no interest in explaining the truth of his plan.  What people fail to realize is that all the Democrats proposals about improving American life are a zero-sum game.  Their proposals do not lead to an expansion of the economy in the long run (which would benefit all Americans).  Their proposals are rather a shift in wealth from certain groups (the working folks / tax adders) to other groups (the welfare folks / tax eaters).  So when they speak about improving life, they're specifically talking about improving life for union members, welfare mothers, layabouts, and their ilk.  Their message of "hope" is inapplicable to the married couple who makes over $250k total and is about to see their tax rate go from 34.3% to 39.3%.  And their social security tax limit increase.  But of course, there are much less folk making over 200k than there are under so hell, we'll use this voting leverage power to screw them over.  I mean, what are they going to do, leave and go to the UK?

jwl:  I like how you neatly divide America into couples making a quarter of a million dollars per year on the one hand and "welfare folks" on the other.  I also note that unionized workers under your scenario are not "workers."  The fact is that 95 percent of Americans fit the "welfare" group, which is the group that will see lower taxes and affordable health insurance under Obama's specific, concrete proposals.  Yes, there is some wealth-shifting.  As there is under McCain's tax plan.  As there was under Bush's tax plan.  As there has been whenever we've had an income tax in this country -- even Lincoln's income tax, which had two brackets.  The facts are very simple:  You and the Republican party want to totally ignore the plight of the vast majority of Americans who face difficult economic times while offering yet further tax breaks to the wealthy that the country can't afford.  You suggest that the wealthy are a minority and so can get screwed by having their income tax rate inccrease a whopping five points.  I'm not as concerned about their plight, because they are simply not facing any significant hardship.  Meanwhile, their interests are well-represented by the Republican Party.  One thing I do know is that if most Americans understood the differences between Obama's tax proposal (middle class tax relief) and McCain's (no middle class tax relief and just more give-aways to the rich which have, you know, worked great so far), then Obama would win in a landslide.

p.s.  I don't know if your "leave and go to the UK" comment is serious.  If so, you're nuts.

"I want to lower your taxes and make health insurance affordable for everyone.  McCain doesn't."  Well, you're right Marty.  15 words.

"Their message of "hope" is inapplicable to the married couple who makes over $250k total and is about to see their tax rate go from 34.3% to 39.3%.  And their social security tax limit increase."

GIve me a break.  If you're a working couple making over $250,000.00 / year, in most cases you have financial troubles only to the degree you can't manage your money.  We can argue about what is the appropriate level of taxes for those folks, but you won't get me too worked up over their financial plight.

As for the Social Security Tax: it is an obscenity that my children, working hard at the beginning of their careers pay the full FICA rate on 100% of their salary, while their old man - a hell of a lot closer to drawing social security, and plenty secure from a financial standpoint, pays on about half.

What galls me most about the whining I hear from the people affected by an uncapped FICA tax, or an increase in the top rates, is their endless prattling about  how  "I've earned it, and it's just wrong for the government to take any more [or often, any at all] of it."  This is pure navel-gazing baloney.  I earn plenty of money, and I don't like taxes.  But I'm not so self-centered as to imagine that my situation is all my own doing.  Nearly all of the people who work "below" me in our corporate ladder are paid less than I do - some as little as 1/5 of what I am paid.  Every one of them, every day, contributes to my success, and most of them work as hard as I do, with as much dedication.  Along the way to my station in life, I've benefited from parents scratching a living and still devoting most of the resources to their children, not themselves; unselfish teachers and coaches, laboring in obscurity and low salaries, because they love children and education; from scholarships that sent me to college; from college professors who could have made a killing in industry, but chose to teach; and from countless others who have given me a hand up.  And that's just the individual contributors - government sponsored biomedical research has arguably saved my life, and sponsored research in science and technology has literally paved the way for the industry that's made comfortable.  So, like every other well-off, high-earning individual, I am a corporate product of a society that thought I was worth investing in.  I don't feel a bit bad about being expected to contribute back, so that the country can offer the opportunities I've enjoyed to the next generation, and keep all those who labored to make me look good from an old age in poverty.

Government is an imperfect mechanism for doing that, but it's the best we have.  Pony up.

sdemuth - Perfectly said.

For all those who earn more than the FICA cap and yet bitch and moan about the tax levels in the US, try starting from scratch from somewhere where life is a bit different.  I'd recommend looking into Bangladesh or Afghanistan.  See how things go without that worthless government reaching into your pockets.

Sdemuth: wonderfully said.  Thanks.

Which all goes to show that the Greed train is full and speeding on. You ba$tards, you selfish inhumane beasts. Drill, drill, drill for your personal profit in a world where the rest of humanity is suffering.

"So what's relevant on domestic issues is this: Republicans are indifferent to families that make, say, $150,000 or less--although many of such families vote for the G.O.P. for other reasons"

One of those "other"  reasons is that they  hope someday to make $150,000 or more. They believe in the American dream, even if they are not living it today, and they believe that the GOP and its business-friendly policies will help them get there. That's because they think that business, not government, is the source of America's wealth.They actually think that government gets its money from both the businesses  themselves and from the business's employees. That means that government employees ' salaries are paid  largely by the taxes paid by the employees of businesses and by the businesses themselves. Government jobs do not create wealth.

These pople who vote for the GOP "for other reasons"  look to business  to provide  them with jobs, or to present them with opportunities for starting their own businesses.  When business is in trouble, which it is today, so are the families that business once employed but no longer can.

And have you noticed? Also in trouble are schools, and cities, and all of America's entities that depend upon a successful business climate to bring prosperity to America.

Emphasis on punishing businesses and profits is thought by this crowd to be counter -productive. Because economic standing in America is seen as fluid; you can be the family making 30,000 today, but you can turn yourself into the family making over $150,000 in a few years. Of course you don't do that by standing still; you have to work at it, and work hard, maybe more than one job--and perhaps go to school again or at night. Surprising just how hard so many people making more that $150,000 had to work to get there, and still have to work to stay there. That is the one factor so many people making under $150,000 are either ignorant of, or choose to ignore, preferring constantly to paint the "rich" as people who somehow just "are" rich;  they rarely give the "rich" any credit for having worked hard to become what they are, or for working hard now.

Sdemuthfmentioned benefitting from scholarships that sent him to college. I get a kick out of asking college kids where they think their scholarshilp money came from. I have YET to have even one answer that that the money comes from individuals who studied hard like they do, and made a success of themselves by working very hard, and then contributed to their alma maters, which distribute the scholarship money.  They will say, instead, oh, from a trust.  But what IS a trust?

Where did the trust get the money from? They haven't the vaguest.

elliesch - It would not be the case today, the government having largely abdicated on any serious effort to provide affordable post-secondary education to US population, but the scholarship money that payed my way through college and graduate school was GOVERNMENT money, collected through taxes, and disbursed in the form of generous grants, subsidized loans, federal work study, and graduate fellowships funded by federal science programs.  And it was a hell of a bargain for the government.  Half a dozen kids in my family took degrees that include 3 doctorates, 4 masters, 5 baccalaureates, and some vocational education to boot.  The economic and knowledge benefit - we're talking two University professors, two VP-level executives in the technology industry, and a manager of a university medical lab as a result of those degrees - to society represented by all that education, over what we could have accomplished without the GOVERNMENT help, is enormous.

As for the rest of your story - sure we need business, and need to make sure it has the conditions to prosper.  No one knows this better than someone like myself, competing with technology startups in Eastern Europe, India and China in a global market.  There was no suggestion in what I wrote that we ought not have business-friendly economic climate in this country.  I was writing about what individuals  who are benefiting greatly from such a climate should be expected to pay back into the system.

Finally, you're tale about "working hard" is both true, and very misleading.  It's rare for people to raise themselves in the economic sweepstakes without working hard.  But the working poor I know don't  by and large work less hard than I do.  You can work your a** off, and yes, on multiple jobs, in this country, and never get beyond hand to mouth existence, if you are not blessed with lots of talent and opportunities.  So, sure I've worked hard, but I have also benefited from (as I just argued) lot's of help, more native talent than many perfectly worthy people have, and plenty of luck   But don't overlook that I also benefit enormously from those people below me on the economic totem pole, working nearly as hard (or in some cases harder - I do only have on job) as I do, for a lot less compensation.

Republicans love the "work hard, get to the top" myth.  It keeps the working poor and lower middle class firmly in their place - working hard and aspiring, while the money accrues elsewhere.  Doesn't make it true for the majority of people, though.

One more thing, about all those private donors to education: if they, overall, really cared about education, there would be a whole lot less giving for new stadiums, grandly named buildings, and named professorships in the ivy league, and whole lot more for scholarships and maintenance, and they would be giving it not to their ivy league alma maters, already swimming in endowments bigger than a lot of GDPs, but to community colleges, and less well known institutions serving those hard working, sacrificing, working poor and lower middle class, ready to climb the ladder, but lacking rich parents, connections, or double-800 SATs.  Ask a college development officer at your local college how easy it is for them to get money for poor kids to go to school.  The answer will be enlightening.