Two Quick Hitters on Foreign Policy

• Gleen Greenwald is always good for exposing the outrages of the pro-torture, pro-invasion establishment.  This post is no exception.  It makes the point that the Libya operation is illegal on many levels, and that President Obama is going further than President Bush did in asserting war-making powers.  I don't see any reasonable argument that this is a legal military operation- it's not.  On top of that, it's bad policy and shouldn't be approved even if proposed legally (of course I think it would be approved if the President tried, or at least would have been at the start of the conflict).  It's just impossible to picture any good outcome in Libya- either Qadafi survives and stays in power and massacres lots of people anyway, meaning we just gave them a brief reprieve; or the rebels win/ we kill Qadafi, in which case he'll be replaced by a regime that will likely be no different.
• I heard Andrew Ross Sorkin on Morning Joe today off-handedly call the President's decision to greenlight the killing of Osama Bin Laden "the most courageous decision of his presidency" on the way to making another point.  Just how can that decision be characterized as courageous?  I'm not criticizing the decision, mind you, and I'm fine with the assassination of Bin Laden, but it seemed like a kind of obvious call and not particularly controversial even.  Courageous decisions are those that carry huge downside risk or are generally unpopular but the "right thing to do" anyway.  In the Bin Laden case, the soldeirs involved were certainly courageous, as the downside risk for them was death, but Obama's call was pretty easy.  I know it's a minor point, but we shouldn't cheapen the concept of courage in politics like that.  For Obama to be courageous he could do something like close Guantanamo in spite of public opposition, or draw tough lines in the sand with Republicans on the Debt Ceiling negotiations (the downside risk being a default by the US government- maybe not the right thing to do, but courageous anyway- sometimes courageous decisions are still stupid).

Debt Ceilings and Tax Floors

Negotiations for a Grand Bargain seem to be breaking down once again, with Eric Cantor quitting the talks because those darn Democrats won't compromise with him by taking tax hikes completely off the table.  Matt Yglesias has an optimistic take on the political opportunities for Democrats.  Ezra Klein focuses on the Republican politics within the negotiations:

One analysis of the House GOP right now is that there are two players in the GOP who can cut a budget deal: Eric Cantor and John Boehner (and, on some of the other budget issues, Appropriations Chair Hal Rogers). One of them is going to have to do it. Which means one of them is going to lose his job. The optimistic take is that what we’re seeing right now is a game of musical chairs over which one of them it’ll be.

But the pessimistic analysis is that if you had to write a plausible scenario for how America defaults on its debt, or at least seriously spooks the market, this is how it would start. After insisting on using the debt limit as leverage for a budget deal, the Republican leadership finds they can’t actually strike a deficit-reduction deal, but nor can they go back on their promise to vote against any increase in the debt limit that isn’t accompanied by a deficit-reduction deal. What follows is a lot of jockeying and fingerpointing, a short-term increase or two, and eventually, a market panic.

Cantor is putting personal power before country here, and in a very dangerous way. If Boehner actually does manage to cut a decent deal despite Cantor’s effort to throw him under the bus, he may not hold on as leader of his party, but unlike Cantor, he’ll deserve to. For better or worse, this is when we learn whether anyone on the Republican Party’s leadership team is actually prepared to lead.

Basically Klein's point is that Cantor has the backing of the Tea Party, which will accept no tax increase.  If Cantor signs on to a deal with a tax increase, he loses.  But Boehner is less trusted by the Tea Party, and if he signs off on a tax increase then he loses.  Cantor probably wants a tax increase to happen because he's not stupid, but if Boehner does it without him then Cantor could be the next Speaker pretty soon.  Boehner knows this because he's not stupid either, so he wants Cantor to be part of the deal.  So it looks like there won't be a deal because neither one of them is blinking.

But there's another possibility!  Maybe the Democrats will blink!  Why would they do that?  Good question- I think they'd do it because they're gutless windbags, and Obama might lead it because he might be delusional enough to think that if he acts like the "grown up in the room" then it will benefit him and the country.

I just want to scream.  I'm really afraid that the Democrats are going to cave on this one.  This has been worrying me for a while.  If the party of the center-left in this country, controlling the Senate and the Presidency, joins a deal that destroys the safety net in order to keep tax rates at unaffordable historical lows while polls show that Americans support higher taxes on wealthy people, then what do we have a center-left party for?  I know I'm a fire-breathing radical liberal, well to the left of the mainstream in the US; but really, what's the point in supporting Democrats if they can't fight for this?? 

Democrats have lots of leverage here.  For starters, the Bush tax cuts expire in 2012.  If congress does nothing, the long-term deficit issue is greatly improved just like that.  Secondly, if the government shuts down and people stop getting their social security checks when the Debt Ceiling is reached, Republicans will be blamed (as long as Democrats hold their feet to the fire and make sure of it).  Third, as Jon Chait points out, Wall Street doesn't want a default and is  nervous that the whack-jobs in the Tea Party are going to bring the whole country over the cliff, and there could be real defections to the Democrats if that happens.

The Republican strategy has been compared to hostage taking- making the Democrats believe they just might be crazy enough to let the country default.  Democrats just have to stand up and call the bluff, and be ready to follow through with some rough and tumble blame gaming if Republicans can't come back to the table.

Libya Revisited- UPDATED

I find I've almost forgotten about the Libya war, which I addressed early on a bit but haven't touched since then.  Now I read this from Andrew Sullivan, an Obama supporter like me, and find myself in complete agreement.  This is a process worry- the president has gone to war without getting any kind of vote from the Congress.  This seems to be illegal, but like Bush II Obama has found lawyers who tell him there's no problem.  If other lawyers have warned otherwise, he's just ignored them.

It's not like the presidency wasn't already a pretty powerful office before 2000.  The president has lots of power to defend the country.  But the congress has to declare war, and the congress has to fund it.  We're at war in Libya; this gets forgotten because we don't have troops on the ground sustaining casualties, but the US military is nevertheless engaged dropping bombs on a sovereign country with the clear purpose of regime change.  A country that was not threatening the US (at this time anyway).

Obama has joined George W. Bush in completely eviscerating the War Powers Act, and the congress under both presidents, in both parties, has gone along like lambs to the slaughter.  It seems the congress doesn't want to act- they'd rather be on the sidelines so they can't be blamed for the quagmire many of them see coming.

As I've said before, this won't end well.

UPDATE: I was thinking more about this, and want to point out the other big problem with the Libya operation, similar to the problem with Operation Iraqi Freedom.  Nuclear proliferation.  Why is it that we're not considering any military action against North Korea, which is as brutal as anyone in the Middle East and run by a dictator even crazier?  Maybe it's because oil isn't involved.  Or maybe it's because they have nukes.  If I were running Iran, listening to the US rattle sabers constantly, I'd be working like hell to get the Bomb- it's the only way to guarantee the Marines stay out.

Also, see Kevin Drum for more discussion about Obama's refusal to take the advice of the White House Office of Legal Counsel.  The Left blogosphere is not behind him here.

Laffer Idiocy

Conservatives who keep telling me that a tax cut will increase revenue due to the immense boost to the economy are driving me crazy.  Here's an actual quote from my most crazed right wing correspondent:

If we pay less taxes we have more money, we buy a Cars [sic], when we buy a cars, Car dealers hire, Car makers hire, the people that are hired are now taking less from the Government and are PAYING taxes, the guy that sold me the car has more money, he is paying more taxes, he buys a TV from Best Buy, the Best buy salesman has more money, he pays more taxes,,the manager of Best Buy hires, the people he hires are taking less from the Government and are PAYING taxes,,,

It goes on and on and on,,,and the NET RESULT is less people on unemployment and MORE PEOPLE PAYING TAXES!

Except when you look at actual life, what really happens and has happened when we cut taxes from rates that aren't that high historically now, is that the dynamic he describes happens to a small degree, but not enough to make up for the lower tax rates- the government gets less money than it would have gotten if tax rates had remained higher. So you have to cut government spending or run deficits.

Conservatives tried exactly this in the 2000s- it was an abject failure. Why do we keep revisiting a policy that has never worked in real life? It would be like a Left winger trying to convince the country of the wonders of communism- he could throw out a paragraph from Marx or Lenin, which also sounds great, but we'd all know that when they tried it, it didn't work.

Lowering marginal tax rates when they're in the 30s% leads to less revenue. It has other advantages, of course, but it will unquestionably lead to less money for the government. Try to think about it this way: let's say we do what conservatives want and lower the top tax rate from 35% to 25%. They say this will increase revenue. But then why not go down to 20%? OK, how about 10%? What about 1%? 0.00001%? At some point you get to a tax rate that actually does not increase revenue, right? So somewhere there's a number that is the "right" one to maximize tax revenue for the government. How do we figure out what that number is?

The only way to figure it out is to look at history. When we went from 39 to 35% in 2001-03, revenue cratered.  Then it eventually increased as the Bubble Economy did its magic, but still not on the trend line it had been on.  And THEN, when the economy tanked due to the Great Recession, revenue cratered again. History shows us that the optimal number for government revenue is considerably higher than our current rates.  And we can also look at the 1980s- the Reagan tax cuts caused a flattening of revenue, which only returned to the trend when taxes were increased again in the mid-1980s.  Bush I raised taxes too, and revenue kept right on going up.

We don't have to put taxes at the optimal number of course- it's still totally fine to have lower taxes and smaller government if that's what we want. But it's stupid to say that lowering tax rates leads to increased revenue.

Family Guest Post on Turkey

The Foundry doesn't know much about Turkey, but this guest fisking from budding politics blogger ST should be interesting to many of you:

Paranoia Strikes

In yesterday’s elections in Turkey, Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) gained about 50% of the vote, winning the election. AKP’s leader, Tayyip Erdogan, is not a friend of Israel. However, notions of an Islamist regime in Turkey are not at all based in fact. So, here goes nothing. Comments in red.

Stealth Islamism in Turkey

By BARRY RUBIN  

06/13/2011 23:23 

Lenin once reportedly remarked that he would get the capitalists to sell him the rope with which to hang them; the AKP has gotten the West to provide that rope as a gift. 

The elections in Turkey mark a revolution. When Iran’s revolution happened and the Islamists took over in 1979, everyone knew it. In contrast, Turkey’s revolution has been a stealth operation. It has succeeded brilliantly, while Western governments have failed shockingly to understand what’s going on. The suggestion that every single government in the west is too stupid to realize that Erdogan is creating an Islamic Caliphate seems kind of ridiculous to me. Turkey has been a member of NATO for years and has had a democratic system in place. Name one other democracy that has been overthrown after 90 years of republicanism.

Now we are at a turning point – an event every bit as significant as the revolutions in Iran and Egypt. Of course, it will take time, but now Turkey is set on a path that is ending the republic established by Kemal Ataturk in the 1920s. The Turkey of secularism and Western orientation is finished. The Turkey that belongs to an alliance of radical Islamists abroad and at home has been launched. This is just trying to scare the west- there’s no factual basis for this.

Here are the election numbers: The stealth Islamist party, Justice and Development (AKP), received almost exactly 50 percent of the vote. Directly from AKP’s platform (http://eng.akparti.org.tr/english/partyprogramme.html): 

· Basically, secularism is a principle which allows people of all religions, and beliefs to comfortably practice their religions, to be able to express their religious convictions and live accordingly, but which also allows people without beliefs to organize their lives along these lines. From this point of view, secularism is a principle of freedom and social peace.

Doesn’t sound like a crazy Islamist party to me.

Under the Turkish system, this will give it 325 members of parliament, or about 60% of the seats.

On the opposition side, the social democratic Republican People’s Party (CHP) got about 26% of the vote and 135 seats. The right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) took 13%, giving it 54 seats.

There are also 36 independents, all of them Kurdish communalists.

Eleven parties didn’t make the minimum 10% barrier (they received only about 1% or less each).

The AKP won 363 seats with a bit over 34% of the vote in 2002; 341 seats with 46.58% of the vote in 2007; and 325 seats with almost 50% of the vote in 2011.

IN STATISTICAL terms, the AKP lost six MPs despite getting five million more votes, the MHP lost 18 MPs despite tallying half a million more votes, while the CHP gained 33 seats while adding 3.5 million votes. On paper, then, while the AKP stays in power, it’s slightly weaker than before.

But the outcome is nonetheless overwhelmingly bad. As you can see above, the AKP’s percentage of voters keeps rising. Most of the people who back the party don’t want an Islamist regime, and don’t think of the AKP in those terms. It rather seems to them to be a strong nationalist party respecting religious tradition that is making Turkey an important international power and is doing a good job on the economy. So if most of the backers of the party don’t want an Islamist regime, then if Erdogan tries to make Turkey Islamist, he will meet some resistance. Enough that he won’t be able to do it without turning into another Gaddhafi, which won’t happen since Turkey is democratic.

The AKP got almost – remember that, almost – everything it wanted. It increased voter support more than any other party, and will be in power for four – and perhaps many more – years, infiltrating institutions, producing a new constitution, intimidating opponents, altering Turkish foreign policy, and shifting public opinion against Americans and Jews to a larger degree. Opponents of the party do speak of corruption. And yes, Erdogan has not shown himself to be a friend of Israel. On the other hand, Turkish citizens can vote for whomever they want, and if they don’t like Israel, then they have the right to vote for someone who doesn’t. There are no signs that Erdogan has been such an enemy of America, or world Jewry, however.

The only point on which the AKP seemingly fell short is that it didn’t get the two-thirds of parliament needed to pretty much write Turkey’s new constitution any way it wanted.

But so what? Deals with a few willing parliamentarians from other parties could provide the five additional votes needed for submitting an AKP-authored constitution to a referendum. The government can offer individuals a lot, including what I will delicately call personal benefits for their support. And given the way the parliamentary elections went, the AKP can almost certainly win that referendum. Yes, Erdogan is trying to write a new constitution. Apparently, Turkey’s constitution doesn’t quite meet EU standards, and Turkey is trying to join the EU. But the new constitution won’t necessarily be a raging, anti-Israel, anti-West, anti-democratic, Islamist constitution. That’s an unreasonable fear.

In short, the AKP is entrenched in power, and can now proceed with the fundamental transformation of Turkey.

THE AKP has become famous for the subtlety of its Islamism, disguising itself as a “center-right” reform party. Some people in the Arab world are starting to talk about this as a model. Notably, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is fascinated by the strategy. Yet as the Islamist party gains more and more power and support – Turkey has demonstrated this – it becomes more ambitious, daring and extreme. I love when people talk about parties being “disguised”. It’s the same as saying that Obama is “disguised” as a socialist. It’s paranoia.

This would include: 

• A constitution that would take the country far down the road to a more Islamist society. Evidence?

• A more presidential style of government, empowering the mercurial (a nice word for personally unstable and frighteningly arrogant) Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to become chief executive. “More presidential” doesn’t necessarily mean “dictatorial”. The United States has had a presidential system in place since 1788, and they have not had any chief executive who has become a crazy dictator.

• A government that can infiltrate, take over and transform the remaining hold-out institutions, especially the armed forces and courts, along with the remainder of the media that has not yet been bought up or intimidated by the Islamists Sensing the paranoia?

• A government whose policy is to align with Islamists like Iran, Syria (not Islamist but part of the Tehran-led alliance), Hamas, Hezbollah and perhaps the Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey has not exactly aligned with Syria. Unless calling Assad “barely human” qualifies as aligning with someone.

• A government against US and Western interests. Repetition

• A government that, to put it bluntly, hates Israel, and many of whose members hate Jews. Erdogan is clearly not a friend of Israel. But that doesn’t mean that he wishes Israel were destroyed. Simply, there is no evidence with that.

• For Israel, the end of any dreams of restoring the alliance with Turkey, or even normal diplomatic relations. Even Netanyahu seems somewhat confident that diplomatic relations will be restarted. It’s hard to believe this diplomatic standoff will continue.

This is the regime that sponsored the first Gaza flotilla and is now behind the second. From an Israeli perspective, Turkey’s government is now on the side of our enemies. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4079247,00.html

If you don’t want to read it, the FM of Turkey asked the flotilla organizers to rethink the flotilla after Egypt’s opening of the Rafah Crossing. Even before that, Turkey wasn’t behind the flotillas, they merely condemned Israel’s reaction (the first time) and told the world that they couldn’t, as a democracy, stop the organizers (the second time).

It is hard to state these unpleasant realities, and many will not want to face them. There will be no shortage of soothing analyses and encouraging talk about Turkish democracy succeeding, moderate Muslim politics, and how “great” it is that the army’s political power is destroyed. What’s better about a paranoid rant than a “soothing analysis”?

Don’t be fooled.

This is a disastrous day for the United States and Europe, as well as for the prospects of stability and peace in the Middle East. And it isn’t great news for the relatively moderate Arab states either.

It is the end of the republic as established by Ataturk in the 1920s and modified into a multi-party democracy in the 1950s. Well, it may be slightly modified by a new constitution, but this is not the “end of the republic”.

Yet how many people in the West actually appreciate what’s happening? How many journalists will celebrate the election as a victory for democracy? Lenin once reportedly remarked that he would get the capitalists to sell him the rope with which to hang them.

The AKP has gotten the West to provide that rope as a gift.

Hey, the US Doesn't Actually Tax That Much

This chart, from ThinkProgress via Kevin Drum, shows how the US corporate tax rate isn't actually choking off growth in our fair country.  Drum's headline asks corporations to "stop whining".  Sounds good to me.

One thing that strikes me about the whole taxes debate here is how conservatives keep going on about the "increasing" burden on them, while the tax burden has been steadily decreasing over recent years.  Liberals and neutral news people need to challenge that narrative.  We should be reporting the trends as they actually are.

Tax Cuts and Laffer Curves

One of my right wing correspondents is giving me the business lately about how cutting taxes will be a free ride, leading to higher tax revenue and balancing the budget.  Of course this is now a standard Republican talking point.  Here's my primer:

The Laffer Curve says that if you raise taxes on and on, eventually you get to a point where the higher taxes lead to less revenue. For example: if taxes go from 99% to 100%, obviously people will stop working and revenues will go down. I don't doubt that's true too if marginal tax rates go from 90% to 95%. On the other end of the curve, tax rates going from 0% to 1% will increase revenue even though taxes are going up, since at 0% revenue is 0. Hopefully conservatives even agree that raising taxes from 1% to 10% would raise revenue, since people would still be keeping the vast majority of their money.
So the question is: what's the "sweet spot" marginal tax rate (or corporate tax rate, or sales tax rate, or whatever) that maximizes government revenue? Obviously it's not 95% and it's not 1%; it's somewhere in the middle. So now the top marginal tax rate is 35%. In the late 90s it was 39.6% and the budget was balanced. In the late 50s the rate was 91%, and in 1945 it was 94%! (Data is here.)
Nobody is arguing that we should go back to 90+% rates. But if conservatives think that revenues will go up if we reduce rates from the current 35%, then what are they proposing is the Sweet Spot?
I'm not saying that government should put tax rates in exactly the spot at which revenue is maximized. I happen to think the "sweet spot" is probably way higher than 40%, but government shouldn't try to raise more money than it needs. I know the reason conservatives want lower taxes isn't so government can have more revenue, but so citizens get to keep more of their own money. Conservatives don't care if government revenue goes down- that's a feature, not a bug. And when you reduce tax rates at these levels revenue is lower than it would have been:

Notice the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 were followed by revenue declines. Yes, they went back up as the Bubble economy grew in the 00's, but still not to the trend line they had been on. And of course they cratered again when the recession hit. Also look at revenues after the 1991 GHWB tax hike- going up steadily. And look at revenues after the early 1980s Reagan tax cuts at the start of the graph- flat, not starting to rise until Reagan increased taxes in the middle of his term.
So when one looks at actual data, it shows that- surprise!- when you raise taxes while they're at our current rates, you also raise revenue. When you cut taxes you cut revenue- there's no such thing as a free lunch in the real world.
Now reasonable people can be in favor of lower taxes anyway. They don't need to make ludicrous arguments like the Laffer Curve. The Republican party is in favor of lower taxes because they feel it is more free to pay less taxes. They don't really care about the deficit, as they've shown really clearly every time they've been in charge. They didn't care about the exploding deficit during the Bush years. I just wish conservatives would all be honest about that- there's no free lunch, and lower tax rates will lead to lower revenue which will lead to bigger deficits.

What?  Republicans don't care about the deficit? That can't be true, you say!  Well here's a graph of federal deficits since 1970:

Republicans controlled the Senate and the presidency in the 1980s, and deficits went up a lot.  Divided government in the 1990s resulted in a decreased deficit, even a surplus.  Then sole Republican control returned in 2001 and the deficit went up, culminating in a huge increase at the end of George W Bush's second term when revenues cratered due to the recession.  And see how the deficit is projected to go back down soon?  That's the expiration of the Bush tax cuts in 2012.  Which Republicans universally oppose.  Because they're against deficits.... or something.
(Source for the last graph is here.  This is a great website, with graphs you can customize)

Anthony Weiner

Sex scandals are fun, even when they involve guys on my side of the political street.  The Anthony Weiner story seems to say something about the kind of people who go into politics.  We all know they're narcissists- I guess you'd have to be one to put up with the sort of attention and lack of privacy that is the live of a politician.

But some of these guys are bordering on delusional and mentally ill.  A colleague at work today suggested that Weiner may well be Bipolar, and I think this is possible.  A Bipolar person in a manic or hypomanic phase is extremely impulsive, grandiose, and does not consider the consequences of his/her actions.  Now think of what Weiner did: he sent racy pictures of himself on the internet to complete strangers, identifying himself accurately.  How could he possibly think he wouldn't get outed?  He's an important public figure!  He didn't even use a pseudonym or try to hide who he was!

And then, to top it off, when he got busted he tried to spin a lie that couldn't possibly stand up to scrutiny if anyone did a little digging.  Did he think nobody was going to do some digging?

It's a bizarre story; if it's not about mental illness, maybe it's about the bubble that DC politicians live in.  They learn that rules don't apply to them and they can get away with anything- or so they think.

As for resignation, I find it hard to care.  There's no partisan part here, as he comes from a safe liberal district so he'd be replaced by someone I like politically.  Some have noted that he didn't do anything illegal, and it's probably true that if he sticks it out it'll blow over eventually.  After all, David Vitter is still in the Senate, right?

Obama's Political Errors

My readers know I'm generally a fan of President Obama, as is Paul Krugman.  But this blog post by Krugman strikes me as just right.  I agree with all four specific mistakes noted in the post, but especially like this one:

Second, the administration made what I continue to believe was the awful decision to pretend that the half-measures it was actually able to get were exactly right, not a penny too small. Would it have made a difference in 2010 if Obama had been able to say to the country, “I asked for more aid to the economy, but those guys blocked it, and that’s why we’re not recovering faster”? I don’t know — but it could hardly have been worse than the position he actually found himself in, which was trying to explain why a policy he insisted had been perfect wasn’t doing the job.

There are two possibilities about what's going on here.  One, the administration really believed that the half-measures it enacted in 2009 were just right, or Two they knew it wasn't enough but decided to pretend otherwise in order to demonstrate confidence so the public would stick with the perception that he's a bridge builder or something. 

Either way it doesn't speak well of Obama.  Academic ecnomists crunching numbers all agreed that the stimulus needed to be much bigger than it was.  It was quite predictable that we'd be here now economically, and leads to egg on Obama's face, whereas he could be saying "I told you so" now. 

I think Obama actually might believe the stuff he campaigned on about bringing people together and changing the culture in Washington.  If he still believes that then the man borders on delusional at this point.  I was talking to a work colleague yesterday about this- he was a Clinton supporter, which I wasn't, but we agreed that if nothing else the Clintons know how to fight.  Obama had better figure that out, or his presidency will end up a failure, and short to boot.

Fisking Thomas Sowell

I don't know who Thomas Sowell is, but someone sent me this article.  Here's my commentary in blue:

Dependency and Votes



By Thomas Sowell
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com


Those who regard government "entitlement" programs as sacrosanct, and regard those who want to cut them back as calloused or cruel, picture a world very different from the world of reality.
To listen to some of the defenders of entitlement programs, which are at the heart of the present financial crisis, you might think that anything the government fails to provide is something that people will be deprived of. "entitlement programs" are not at the heart of the current deficit- that's the Bush tax cuts- that's what caused the current deficit. Entitlements are the issue for the long-term deficit.
In other words, if you cut spending on school lunches, children will go hungry. If you fail to subsidize housing, people will be homeless. If you fail to subsidize prescription drugs, old people will have to eat dog food in order to be able to afford their meds. Well, I hate to break it to people, but that's all true. What's ridiculous is to claim that cutting food spending on poor children will result in anything else but some children going hungry, or that cutting subsidized housing will result in anything else but an increase in homelessness. Of course that will be the result! To argue otherwise is dishonest. Now maybe it's worth it to allow those things to happen, maybe we can't afford to subsidize those things, but even so real people will certainly be affected.

This is the vision promoted by many politicians and much of the media. But, in the world of reality, it is not even true for most people who are living below the official poverty line. Straw man. I don't know what percentage of poor people will be affected by such cuts- it may be less than half, but it's certainly more than zero. I'd like to see this author quote some statistics if he's saying that the number is negligible.
Most Americans living below the official poverty line own a car or truck-- and government entitlement programs seldom provide cars and trucks. Most people living below the official poverty line also have air conditioning, color television and a microwave oven--and these too are not usually handed out by government entitlement programs. No doubt. Some people among the working poor will no longer be able to afford their truck since they'll have to spend more on food or housing, and so they won't be able to get to work, and they'll be even poorer.

Cell phones and other electronic devices are by no means unheard of in low-income neighborhoods, where children would supposedly go hungry if there were no school lunch programs. So poor people shouldn't be allowed to have phones? In reality, low-income people are overweight even more often than other Americans. What's that supposed to mean? That poor people are fat so they don't deserve support? Might it be relevant that healthy food costs more than crappy food?
As for housing and homelessness, housing prices are higher and homelessness a bigger problem in places where there has been massive government intervention, such as liberal bastions like New York City and San Francisco. That implies some sort of causation, which is unproven, and frankly ridiculous. Housing costs more on the liberal coasts because there's more demand for housing there. For this point to make any sense, one would have to describe a plausible way in which specific policies have caused homelessness in those places. As for the elderly, 80 percent are homeowners. whose monthly housing costs are less than $400, including property taxes, utilities, and maintenance. Good thing the elderly have social security supporting their housing costs.

The desperately poor elderly conjured up in political and media rhetoric are-- in the world of reality-- the wealthiest segment of the American population. The average wealth of older households is nearly three times the wealth of households headed by people in the 35 to 44-year-old bracket, and more than 15 times the wealth of households headed by someone under 35 years of age. Some elderly people are poor. Nobody said all elderly people were poor. Why are the elderly not poor? Because of social security and Medicare!!!!

If the wealthiest segment of the population cannot pay their own medical bills, who can? The country as a whole is not any richer because the government pays our medical bills-- with money that it takes from us. Before Medicare was passed in 1965, many elderly people couldn't pay their medical bills, and costs have only gone up. How can anyone argue with a straight face that the elderly will be able to afford private health insurance without government intervention considering how expensive medical care is today for people over 65?
What about the truly poor, in whatever age brackets? First of all, even in low-income and high-crime neighborhoods, people are not stealing bread to feed their children. The fraction of the people in such neighborhoods who commit most of the crimes are far more likely to steal luxury products that they can either use or sell to get money to support their parasitic lifestyle.
As for the rest of the poor, Professor Walter Williams of George Mason University long ago showed that you could give the poor enough money to lift them all above the official poverty line for a fraction of what it costs to support a massive welfare state bureaucracy. So is this arguing that we should start giving bags of money to poor people instead? I don't think that would go over too well.
We don't need to send the country into bankruptcy, in the name of the poor, by spending trillions of dollars on people who are not poor, and who could take care of themselves. The poor have been used as human shields behind which the expanding welfare state can advance.
The goal is not to keep the poor from starving but to create dependency, because dependency translates into votes for politicians who play Santa Claus. Before the modern welfare state existed, in the 19th and early 20th century, we had the Utopia of non-dependency. How did that work out? There were lots of desperately poor people all over the place. In capitalist societies there are always going to be winners and losers. Some of the losers are lazy. Some are drug-addicted. Some are unlucky. Some are mentally ill or mentally retarded. Some are not very bright. There is a right wing fantasy out there that if we stop coddling the losers, they'll all become winners. But that's not how it's ever worked- there's just no evidence of that sort of social policy working.
We have all heard the old saying about how giving a man a fish feeds him for a day, while teaching him to fish feeds him for a lifetime. Independence makes for a healthier society, but dependency is what gets votes for politicians.
For politicians, giving a man a fish every day of his life is the way to keep getting his vote

"Entitlement" is just a fancy word for dependency. As for the scary stories politicians tell, in order to keep the entitlement programs going, as long as we keep buying it, they will keep selling it. So the answer here is to return to the 1920s in our social policy. Think of all the things our society has accomplished since the modern welfare state was created starting in the 1930s. While building that state we won WW II, vaulted to the top of the nations in the world economically, won the Cold War, and emerged as the world's only super-power. Seems like we're doing OK to me.