Bread and Butter Issues
May 5th, 2008 at 9:47 pm by Susie
While some “progressive” bloggers make fun of the $30 people might get from a gas tax holiday, Lambert reminds us that it’s food money to people on the edge.
I know; I’ve been there. It wasn’t that long ago that I lived on $12,000 a year, and made grocery money by carting things onto the sidewalk and holding impromptu yard sales. Thirty dollars is real money when you’re hanging by a thread:
$30 =
* 4 loaves white bread @ $.99
* 12oz. box store brand corn flakes @ $.99
* 1 lb. 2 oz. jar of store brand peanut butter @ $1.77
* 2 packs of hot dogs @ 2 for $5
* 3 cans baked beans @ $.84 each
* 1 doz. eggs @ $2.99
* 1 lb American cheese $1.99
* 3 boxes pasta @ $.99
* 3 jars spaghetti sauce @ $.99
* quick oats @ $1
* 2 boxes Rice-A-Roni @ $1
Plus tax, of course.
UPDATE: Everything listed here is from sales circulars from my neighborhood supermarkets.
Thanks for the link, Susie. You know what I thought reading this post? You’re pretty…. creative.
I’ve been toying with the idea of renaming the “creative class” the “bullshit class.” Name and claim it, as they say…
Keep in mind that one of the Blogger Boyz was whining a few months back about how hard it is to scrape by on $75 grand a year. That was the next-to-last straw before I quit clicking there anymore.
Cheese only $1.99 a pound!
Where can you get cheese for only $1.99?
even mr hrc thought the gas tax holiday was a stupid idea when it was bandered about during his two terms. like nafta, mrs hrc must have sided against big bill…
That $30 is not free. The loss of those tax dollars would result in:
300,000 American Jobs Lost. $9 Billion in Federal Highway Funds.
North Carolina: 7,071 Jobs and $203,319,748 in federal highway funds
Indiana: 6,390 Jobs and $183,722,596 in federal highway funds
But hey, we don’t have any highway/bridge infrastructure problems or anything and screw those 300,000 people who would lose their jobs - give me my damn $30.
Plus economists estimate that the supply & demand curve will just result in the prices going up to cover the tax reduction and the extra $$ will all go to the oil companies.
Oh happy day!
here is a link that discusses what mr hrc though of the idea in 2000…
http://www.docstrangelove.com/2008/05/04/hillary-clinton-bill-clinton-her-economic-advisor-oh-my/
gas tax holiday = enourmous windfall profit for big oil
That $30 isn’t one shopping trip. It’s $3 per week over 10 weeks.
I’m all for helping people hurt by the gas crunch, but this isn’t the way.
Have to agree with Hillary’s critics here. This post assumes that people would receive that benefit but the net effect is to take money from infrastructure and send it to the oil companies.
The real solution to our energy crisis is likely HIGHER gas prices. Economists are pretty much universal in their belief that only high prices with stimulate the actions by car manufacturers and others needed to create more efficient cars and get us off of the oil drug.
When Hillary was confronted with this fact (economists are universally in disagreement with her) she stated:
“I’m not going to put my lot in with economists”
That’s quite honestly the most stunning statement of this entire campaign.
How do you formulate an economic policy in the face of universal disapproval of the men and women paid to figure out if such policies would work.
If not for Wright, that statement in itself could have ended the campaign. It’s direct evidence that she is using policy statements as a tool to win votes in the short term as opposed to a real solution.
I am an Obama guy, but that’s something even the Hillary fans should have to consider.
The royal family of Saudi Arabia gave the Clinton facility in Little Rock about $10 million.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/14/AR2007121402124_pf
… and Hillary knows perfectly well that her pandering about this issue amounts to zilch because it has zero support from the experts and will go nowhere. So she can safely pander, pander, pander and not risk one freekin cent of the vast fortunes of her hubby’s friends the Saudi’s.
One more sign that Obama is out of touch: he doesn’t think that “just $30″ means much. maybe he should ask his “single” mother-who, we’ve all heard so many times-accepted food stamps (while she was working on her Masters Degree.)
I guess when your whole persona is manufactured and you live inside a cozy bubble of adoring sycophants, you can’t be bothered by a measly 30 bucks. I make 100K a year, and 30 bucks means something to ME.
I’m getting a feeling of deja vu all over again.
Outside of the context of an election, I think very few Democrats, Susie Madrak included, would think it’s an excellent idea to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a tax cut that rewards people proportionally to how much they drive. Some people might even say that using tax policy to reward the consumption of oil hurts them in the long run. But no, if Hillary supports this tax cut, then it must be good for working people. Somewhere out there is somebody who buys a lot of gas and actually needs $30 for food, so it doesn’t matter if the vast majority of the tax cut goes to people who fill up their Suburban twice a week, and to the trucking industry, who will assuredly not pass on their short-term savings in the form of lower costs on the goods that they deliver.
This phony sanctimony really makes you look bad. You say you’re looking out for working families but it’s transparent that in this case, you’re only looking out for Hillary Clinton.
If Hillary Clinton really cares about poverty reduction, by the way, let’s see her pass that windfall profits tax and spend the revenues not on rewarding gasoline consumption, but instead on poverty reduction.
Seriously, I can name a hundred ways that you could do more good for people in need with that money than a short-notice, short-term gas tax cut. In fact, it’s hard to think of a less effective way than distributing the money using gas stations as a middleman. What’s next, Federal grants to buy scratch-offs?
You know what, Neil? You’re obviously someone who’s never been poor and clearly has the lofty luxury of thinking beyond survival. You think there’s a lot of discretionary driving going on now? They drive to work, they take the kids to school, they pick up their elderly parents from the doctor’s. Which of that driving will they stop with higher gas prices? NONE OF IT. It’s necessary.
Oh, and tell me how those people will get to work and take care of their families when they live in areas without public transit.
“Phony sanctimony”? Look in a mirror, Neil.
Are Obama people this deliberately dishonest? The tax will be paid for with “excessive profits” from big oil. No lost jobs, etc. You’re a liar if you say otherwise. Just as you are a liar if you pretend this is Hillary’s answer for everything.
Obama is supposed to be about a new politics. Their lies on this matter and their doctored videos proves that it is a new level of “low politics”. Disgusting.
Matthew Rothschild, no big fan of Clinton generally, supports the idea. As he points out it’s a regressive tax and as Neil and his fellow Barakistas surely (don’t) know any true progressive battles all sales taxes and advocates for socially ethical taxation on high salaries, inheritance, capital gains and luxury goods.
http://www.progressive.org/radio_2may08
I read what goes into this blog today and wonder…what happened to the person who thought enough to post this? http://susiemadrak.com/2008/01/14/15/44/i-will-not-support-hillary-clinton-for-president/
If hrc somehow gets the nomination it make the election (in my opinion) a choice of Repub or Repub-lite I know where my choice needs to be. Kind of like how people need to hit bottom before they will seek help.
Wow. Somebody managed to drag in the Clinton library into a discussion of Susie’s $30 food budget? You guys are intense.
Check out this Salon post. Sure, the gas tax holiday might not work in theory, but it works in fact. And in the state of Illinois, too.
But you gonna believe? Econ 101, or your lyin’ eyes?
(All the nonsense about collapsing bridges — nice work on the hope and optimism front, guys — is just so much OFB lekkage. No point paying attention, no matter how much they froth and stamp. It’s exactly like dealing with freepers, back in the day.)
You’re awfully eager to call somebody you know nothing about an out-of-touch elitist. For your information, though you didn’t ask, I take the bus to my job where I earn less than $25,000 a year to support my family. But I guess I just don’t deserve a tax break, I mean, I’m only hurting from the increased price of oil where it’s incorporated into my food costs and the costs of everything else I buy. My grocery bill has gone up by a lot more than $30 a month over last year, but hey, I guess I don’t have real problems since I don’t own a car.
Yes, there is a lot of discretionary driving going on today. Hell, at my last job, I was the only one who took the bus, but everybody else who worked there drove. None of them lived any farther off the bus grid than I did. They were just rich, overpaid non-profit organization employees living off the fat of the HUD budget. Trust me, when gas costs twice as much, which no act of government will be able to prevent, you’ll have a better idea of what discretionary driving is.
It’s funny, since suspending the gas tax is such a vital aprogressive plan to help Americans in need, I wonder why it was never mentioned on this blog before a week ago? There’s nothing I can’t stand like phony sanctimony.
gmartinez asks:
Are Obama people this deliberately dishonest?
From the Department of Simple Answers to Simple Questions:
Yes.
They’re doing it today by running ads misrepresenting what Krugman said about the gas tax. (You’d think, since Obama has more money than God, that he wouldn’t have to resort to that, but I guess it’s just his nature.) And last week, some members of our “creative class” doctored to “War Room” film clip to make it appear the Clinton supporters insulted IN and made racist comments.
So, again, I’d say the answer to the question is Yes.
Hey, speaking of discretionary lattes, oh, I’m sorry, discretionary driving, what useless consumer good will you waste your $30 on? I’m thinking of having some cosmetic surgery done.
I have come to think of Obama supporters as elitists who are more concerned with their own pretty words than with working people in this country. Working people are so… uncool. And they don’t dress nicely and they have, like, wrinkles and stuff.
lambert@17
DUDE - you rock
Neil…supporting a family on $25,000 a year…I don’t know how you do it and have time to cruise around online.
It’s not just the rising price of gas as others have pointed out but food costs have gone through the roof. I don’t recall the last time I saw a loaf of bread for 99 cents but I’ll take your word for it.
The symbolism is real…either you are willing to break the mold/conventions to help out people who are getting squeezed or you aren’t. Even worse is that the job market is shrinking, there’s little chance in most industries to get a raise in pay that will do anything to approximately cover the increases in the cost of living, the cost of health care is rising at 15%-20% annually.
Yeah, what we are talking about is small money and I can see where the ‘Poverty Sucks’ crowd isn’t going to get worked up over something that returns $25-$75 per family this summer but it’s a about time someone starting tossing bones around.
Congratulations, momof2. Now you know how half the country thinks of all Democrats. I hope you enjoy it!
Thank you! It’s actually more like $23,000, though I hasten to add that I am certainly privileged compared to people who live in the U.S. and support their families on $23,000 a year. But I don’t think that my meager income is nearly sufficient to render my opinion invalid.
Susie, great post and on point.
I still think it’s a shit idea.
Oh my gosh, and as long as I’m baring my suffering-American credibility to you guys, I might as well mention that I owe $12 grand to an American hospital that I’ll never be able to pay! Just for taking my baby to the emergency room! (We’re all American citizens, in case any Minutemen are reading) I’m not making this up, that’s just how down I am.
So what I’m saying is, it hurts a lot more when you say my opinion is worthless because I’ve never been poor and I live in lofty luxury than if you were to say it’s just because I’m hopelessly stupid. That got my commenting leg to twitching, I guess. Never mind, I’ll stop now.
Several people have commented that there would be a loss of jobs and neglect of infrastructure.
They’re describing the McCain plan NOT the Clinton plan.
The Clinton plan is revenue neutral; no loss of jobs, no neglected infrastructure.
By the gallon taxes are regressive. I would like to see the elimination of as many regressive taxes as possible. Real review of tax policy with a view to greater progressivity would be a step in the right direction.
But, but…it doesn’t completely solve everyone’s problems forever! So we might as well not do it.
Everybody knows this is a bandaid. But some people are bleeding badly right now, and every little bit helps.
“The symbolism is real…either you are willing to break the mold/conventions to help out people who are getting squeezed or you aren’t.”
yeah, and a DLC candidate is just the one to break that mold and make some –EMPTY–symbolic gestures!!!
The oil companies will NEVER just raise their prices to cover the cost of their lost revenues, they would never dare think of such a thing!
Oh, excuse me, my latte is ready, gotta go get in the audi and waste some gas.
Neil said:
“They were just rich, overpaid non-profit organization employees living off the fat of the HUD budget.”
Neil congratulations - you are learning to use your own eyes and brain to see what is really going on with our tax money. That means you will one day cross over to the dark side and vote Republican. Trust me- you will be happier!
We’re knee deep in the awesome.
Wow, this thread devolved pretty quickly from a discussion of how much of a difference $30 could make to a person on the edge to bashing Hillary for completely unrelated ideas.
It continues to astonish me that so much energy is expended in trying to tear Hillary down (while accusing her of going negative) rather than discussing issues.
I’d like to know what kind of relief plan Obama is proposing as an alternative to a gas-tax holiday. I’d love to know what he proposes to do to deal with the rise in food prices caused not just by speculators but by rising transport costs. Unfortunately, neither he nor his supporters want to tell me. They just want to talk about how bad Clinton’s plan is, or talk about Bill’s presidential library donors.
Are you really telling me that a person who needs $30 to eat for a month will get that $30 by saving on what they spend on gas? Ignoring the fact that the price of gas will go right back up to where it was and the oil companies will just rake in more profits. Ignore the fact that you can save more than $30 by changing your driving habits. Ignore the fact that neither Clinton nor McCain have actually submitted a bill to Congress. Ignore the fact that the money that would have gone to roads and infrastructure will go to the oil company executives. Ignore the fact that 300,000 American jobs will be lost because of that lost money. But why stop at $30? What about all the money you could get if we stopped paying for police and fire and schools? What if we stopped all taxes? Think of all the Ramen noodles you could buy!
Ignoring all that… here is my real question. Is there a limit on how stupid the American public is or was P.T. Barnum right?
I’ve been poor (I still AM poor) and I think the “gas tax” holiday is about the most retarded thing I have ever heard that hasn’t come out of a retarded person’s mouth.
Neil: So what I’m saying is, it hurts a lot more when you say my opinion is worthless because I’ve never been poor and I live in lofty luxury than if you were to say it’s just because I’m hopelessly stupid.
Wait til she calls you an elitist or naive. I only come by here now to see the trainwreck.
OK. Back of the envelope math. I’ve got a 12 year-old, crap car that gets about 20 mpg. So, at 18 cents a gallon, I would have to drive… 3,333 miles to see that $30 of “savings.”
I’m already down to absolutely essential trips, which is about 20 miles a day for me. So. In 33 weeks, I could receive that $30 windfall.
Or just over 90 cents a week in savings.
Whoo! That’s a reason to vote! You convinced me!!
I find this completely mind-boggling - who’s poorer than whom? What crap. I guess frying garbanzo beans in lard & then adding a can of peaches qualifies me. Or maybe not. Whether or not you support Sen. Clinton, this whole episode is stupid. & what’s worse, anyone who thinks, as well as works, is now some sort of elitist. How does $109,000,000 in eight years sound to you, Lambert/Susie? Sounds pretty damn elitist to me. I’m really disappointed in the “left” blogosphere who have taken on this poorer-than-thou mantle. For Christ’s sake people, this is not how you win.
Oh, & in terms of the $30 - how many urban poor actually have a car to drive? Where are they going to get their $30 lifeline of food? How many have been helped to file a tax return, even if they don’t have to pay taxes, to get their rebate? Maybe Lambert & Susie ought to quit wasting their time providing menus for the poor & go out & actually help them file a return. $300 might actually help pay the rent for a month.
coldH2Owl:
Er, no. Elitism isn’t about how much money you have. It’s about your attitude toward those who have less money than you.
For example, when you write:
you’re putting “lambert & susie” on one side and “the poor” on the other. What that construction ignores is that we are not devising menus for “the poor,” people other than us at all. These are our own menus.
I can’t imagine why you can’t see that, or why you don’t write as if yo did.
There’s a word for that… Wait, it’ll come to me…
Lambert, Last I checked, your menu consisted of sipping wine and and munching on Brie at the overpriced yuppie trap known formerly known as Xando. There’s a word for what your pushing here, but I can’t think of it off the top of my head.
Lambert:
How decent of you. But, no, I’m not separting you two from the poor, what I’m saying to you is that it’s absolutely stupid to think that $30 will make any difference to a person who has no place to spend it on non-corporate crap food (like nitrate filled hotdogs), who probably doesn’t drive a care anyway. But that’s OK with you, let them eat hot dogs &, oh, just forget it. I think Marx had a word for your style of thinking, let’s see, oh, forget that, I sure don’t want to seem like an elitist economic theorist who doesn’t understand what it means to fill your belly with water to assuage the empties, as we called them in while cutting pulp.
That would be “…as we called them while cutting pulp.” Sorry.
& I’m also sorry that I, too, took the bait from $30 will change lives crowd. What crap.
Well, I gotta say, that would be the most painful $30 I ever got, because to get it I’d have to spend hundreds on fuel, and it already hurts enough to spend hundreds on fuel and keep my daily food budget at about $2 per day. The last thing I need is to take my whopping $1 savings after a fill-up and put it in that special “$30 Fund” for the big day when I reach that mark.
Now, if they put a windfall tax on oil company profits and gave everyone on food stamps $30 to spend, that would be a different matter.
While the poorest of us (me included) may not see $30 in savings from the putative gast tax holiday (I don’t drive that many miles)—the bread & butter issues post here was about the nastiness in the comment disparaging a savings of $30.
I heard that on the news yesterday and thought, OW, that’s rude, just because $30 isn’t much to you doesn’t mean it isn’t a lot to me. While I don’t know how useful the gas tax holiday itself would be to the country at large, I do know how much $30 is to me: two full bags of groceries including protein, or a good down payment on a visit to the doctor’s office.
And I think ‘dismissive class’ is better than ‘creative class’ for those folks.
Chris burbles:
Lambert, Last I checked…
Yeah, that’s when I had a job and I love good food. Situations change, as I’m sure you know. I’m not prescribing my post-dot-com menu of Dollar Store spaghetti sauce to everyone. Just saying that there are people for whom that’s a reality — Susie and myself, both, at times in our lives. All the Obama posters on this thread seem remarkably concerned to deny that.
Elliott:
just because $30 isn’t much to you doesn’t mean it isn’t a lot to me.
Exactly. When you boil down the whole wankfest and all the hysteria, that’s what all it amounts to.
cheese for $1.99 pound?
that ain’t real cheese that’s for sure, that is good old ^%$#*&^ processed cheese!
I would check those hot dogs too, they might be just that.
I’m not remarkably concerned to deny anything of the sort, Lambert. I would, however, be remarkably surprised if the bit of faux populism, of the sort usually promoted by wingnuts and internet glibertarians, which you are peddling at the moment, actually has any tangible benefits for much of anybody, much less people who need to live off of ramen noodles and spaghetti sauce from the local dollar store. Who knows. I’m often wrong. That said, I find myself in a state of bemused horror watching the spectacle of a person, whose internet persona seems to be a contrived concoction of equal parts elitism and condescension, rail against the elitist elements of the internet political world while savoring a hunk of Brie at the local Cosi. Well done sir. Bravo.
I love Obies, I posted about regressive taxation and linked to Rothschild (of the Progressive magazine which I’m sure you’ve never heard of) and not a peep in response, just lots of bleating about who’s an elitist, the evil old lady and incorrect babblings about 300,000 jobs lost from the Highway Fund.
Another aspect being forgotten is the political game point that’s going on here. McCain came out with this populist proposal and Clinton snatched it and improved it (that’s by talking of a windfall tax on the oil companies as opposed to raising the Highway funds ObieKenobis) thus preventing the Republicans from appearing to be the only ones who care about working voters. Of course the mendacious munchers of the Village and MR High and Mighty himself may pour scorn on such ‘pandering’ but the voters who will decide the president in November do care. Therefore this is brilliant politics by the devil lady and yet another example of why Barry is a disastrous nominee for Democrats.
Oh but there there is indeed a tangible benefit of this “pandering”. It is doing a marvelous job of exposing Obama’s real attitude toward the working class.
You might as well buy bumper stickers for every fancy hybrid car boasting “I can afford to get around no matter how much gas costs…and really, who else but me matters? OBAMA 08!”
Leadership isn’t telling people what to stop doing. It’s giving them an alternative.