{"id":12872,"date":"2012-11-11T18:22:30","date_gmt":"2012-11-11T23:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=12872"},"modified":"2012-11-11T18:37:05","modified_gmt":"2012-11-11T23:37:05","slug":"the-next-game-of-economic-chicken-taxing-the-rich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2012\/11\/11\/the-next-game-of-economic-chicken-taxing-the-rich\/","title":{"rendered":"The Next Game of Economic Chicken: Taxing the Rich"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Nation of Change has published Robert Reich’s article The Next Game of Economic Chicken: Not on the Deficit But Over Taxing the Rich<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some Democrats (and some White House strategists) figure they\u2019ll have most bargaining leverage in next year\u2019s deal if they do nothing now \u2013 allowing tax rates to rise automatically on everyone after the first of the year. Then they plan to offer Republicans a deal that reduces taxes on people earning less than $250,000 \u2013 which would be retroactive to January 1st.<\/p>\n

Republicans would have to choose between a tax cut on the middle class or no tax cut at all. Democrats believe Republicans would have to take the deal. Even Grover Norquist would be hard-pressed to come up with an argument against it.
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\nSo who blinks first? Democrats who don\u2019t mind going over the cliff because they\u2019ll get a better final deal \u2013 and the deal will be retroactive to January 1st so it\u2019s not really a cliff at all but more like a little hill?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Keep that last part of the quote in mind always.\u00a0 The fiscal cliff is only a cliff if the scheduled changes go into effect and the Congress never does anything in the ensuing decade to fix the problem.<\/p>\n

This idea of the fiscal cliff fits right in as part of Naomi Klein’s thesis in The Shock Doctrine<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine<\/em> vividly shows how disaster capitalism \u2013 the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock \u2013 did not begin with September 11, 2001.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The wealthy, the Republicans, and the media owned by the wealthy want to scare you so badly that you will put pressure on Congress to “do something, do anything, don’t just stand there, do something!”\u00a0 What you should be saying to President Obama and the Democrats is, “Stand your ground.\u00a0 Don’t cave to the scare tactics.\u00a0 You have all the high cards, use them.\u00a0 Call their bluff. Use the shock doctrine on them for a change.”<\/p>\n

If you read the quotes I have chosen from Robert Reich’s article you can infer that I have left out the other side of the game of chicken.\u00a0 Very clever of you.\u00a0 Now go read the article to find out what the other side is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Nation of Change has published Robert Reich’s article The Next Game of Economic Chicken: Not on the Deficit But Over Taxing the Rich. Some Democrats (and some White House strategists) figure they\u2019ll have most bargaining leverage in next year\u2019s deal if they do nothing now \u2013 allowing tax rates to rise automatically on everyone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12872","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12872"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12878,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12872\/revisions\/12878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}