Populism is a political ideology that holds that citizens are often exploited by small circles of corrupt elites, who can be overthrown if the people recognize the danger and work together. Populism arose in response to the 19th century “robber barons” who used their wealth to crush competition, rig markets, and corrupt government. Many Americans have embraced populism after realizing that today’s political, cultural, and media elites pose just as great a threat to the rights and well-being of common people, as the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts did over 140 years ago.
I embraced populism after concluding that my fellow conservatives have done little – if anything – to curb the power of the reigning oligarchy. Indeed, conservatives have empowered the rise of the elites by lowering taxes on the super-rich while allowing the tax burden on the middle class to increase dramatically. For example, the median income in 1955 was about $5,000 a year, with each dependent providing a $600 write off. Since then, incomes have increased tenfold via inflation while the dependent exemption has only increased about four times, thereby exposing much more of middle class income to federal taxes. On the other hand, the top marginal rates from the 1950s and 1960s on the very rich have come tumbling down thanks to conservatives, allowing the elites to have more disposal income to purchase politicians and bribe political parties and civic organizations.
Conservatives also fail to see how the current wave of low-skilled, low-wage immigration has ripped off the middle and working classes while lining the pockets of the elites. By drawing millions of low-skilled, semi-literate ADULT workers primarily from Mexico and Central America willing to work for $7 an hour, the “free market” stance advocated by conservatives has only served to burden the working and middle class through job displacement, higher property taxes (to pay for educating immigrant children), and much higher health insurance premiums (to pay for their emergency room visits). Lord, can’t rank and file conservatives see how badly they are getting screwed by the rich who get all of the benefits but none of the costs of cheap adult immigrant labor?
And finally, conservatives have allowed the Left to take over the public schools and academia, resulting in the dramatic dumbing down of our nation’s school children. As the populist comedian George Carlin pointed out years ago, this intentional dumbing down of the younger generation serves the interests of “the owners of America” who want obedient and compliant workers, who are just smart enough to run the machinery and fill out the paperwork, but not smart enough to realize how they have been screwed by a system that threw them overboard 40 years ago. Populists should not be fooled by “well-intentioned” elites who push Common Core and other welfare state ruses designed to keep poor people dependent, middle class kids woefully educated, while the children of the elite and privilege attend stellar schools and receive a world class education designed to keep them in positions of power.
From what I have seen in my lifetime the “rising tide” advocated by conservatives does not lift all boats, but rather only the biggest yachts.
48 comments
Excellent article; agree with much of what you wrote. Yep, I’m one of the former “conservatives” now turned populist. There are a lot of us.
We got some Commonwealth swamps to drain as well.
The establishment is alive and well, and so is the media that promotes them.
Speaking of which, it seems about time for BD’s monthly installment of “Dave Brat sucks”
Seems like they are the blog of record for not-republicans. I might give a hoot if they were anything other than a bad example. We should deport some libertarians their way.
Yes, BD has gone weird. It’s the safe place for Republicans to attack other Republicans. When the Democrats pile on too, it’s hard to discern which are the Republicans and which are the Democrats.
Blue Virginia is the worst though. Seems to be just two guys sharing pure Democrat propaganda with each other. Hardly any comments on most of it; no ideas or debate at all. Totally boring and useless.
I thought it was always weird, mostly ugly, RINO elite nonsense.
I think once you open the door to libertarians, all of the fuzzy thinkers think they can stroll on in.
Dems and RINOs don’t like discussion or debate, they like power and the status quo.
Republicans support the nominees, non-Republicans don’t.
I prefer the Merriam-Webster definitions, especially the 2nd one.
1 : a member of a political party claiming to represent the common people; especially often capitalized : a member of a United States political party formed in 1891 primarily to represent agrarian interests and to advocate the free coinage of silver and government control of monopolies
2 : a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people
Similar roots to the GOP.
Why aren’t campaign funds spent by candidates taxed?
You want a VAT on campaign spending?
I haven’t seen many solutions proposed here, but we’ve chatted often enough so you know I agree with a lot that you say but disagree on others. I would agree that many people of any ideological persuasion have looked to some outside authority to “manage” affairs, be it Big Gov, Big Church, Big Biz, etc. These are statists and they want someone else to be in charge and responsible. Populism won’t get your anywhere if it is filled with statist solutions. The individual and the minority will lose every time. The fight has never been left vs right or conservative vs liberal or Republican vs Democrat. It’s always been individualist vs statist.
A populist is not out to gouge the rich – rather a populist strives to prevent the rich from gouging us. And boy, are they ever.
Yes, populism is well represented as common people vs establishment statist elitism. There have been populist Republicans and populist Democrats. Being populist says nothing about liberalism vs conservatism. For example, Trump is center-right on the ideological scale (at least he campaigned that way), so he is not particularly conservative, but he is off the charts on the populism scale. In contrast, Jeb Bush is center-right too, but he at the other end of the populism scale, a globalist, elitist, foreign interventionist to the max, polar opposite of Trump on that scale. I’m happy to have anyone in that upper right quadrant.
Spot on!
For the win, Frank!!
I will refer to previous discussions we’ve had talking about how the GOPe hijacked “conservative” once they recognized it was a buzzword to deceive people. If you expand government, then there is nothing “conservative” about your actions. All we’ve seen for a good 200 years is government expansion with a minor blip on the radar for Reagan taking it down a notch.
What gives me hope with Trump is the blending of conservative ideals (not all, but many) fused to the political power of populism. I am optimistic that something will finally get done in a very real way to cut government. That’s real conservatism.
This post right here is the real danger the Republican party faces. We are in great danger of becoming a center left party to replace the Democrats who have become the far left party. The author uses some of the very same “tax the rich” rhetoric that Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi spout while ignoring basic economics, and not really understanding what he wants or expects a “populist” President Trump to do.
This post actually exposes those who like yourself are the “real danger” that the middle-class “party” faces in this country. You are the one who does not understand economics.
The massive profits generated by exported to communist China jobs, and imported, cheap, illegal labor have allowed today’s Rockefeller and Vanderbilt types to purchase our government as if it were a loaf of bread. These types have purchased legislation to wipe out the American middle-class by taking their money via low wages and high healthcare and other related living expenses with lower and lower wages. Without a decent wage the middle-class resistance dries up. These types also use the media as a weapon to deceive the Godless.
Peddle your elitist BS somewhere else.
PS-Only a complete fool would believe any billionaire is a populist. Most billionaires got to be that way by taking their money from populists. Where else would they get it.
Only a complete fool would think that wealth was a zero sum game and that the only way one person could get it would be to take it from someone else.
No, you can inherit it, or win the lottery. Otherwise you have to steal to get it.
The conquest model stole wealth – then that model was replaced by the work to wealth model.
My personal experience has been that accumulating enormous amounts of wealth requires some form of dishonesty.
Without cheap Chinese labor, do you really think we would have all these billionaires?
Leftist nonsense.
Wealth is created wherever human beings labor. If you and two friends get stranded on an island with nothing, you can build a shelter in exchange for one of your friends gathering fish, while another gathers wood and starts a fire, and nobody took advantage of anybody (or, if you prefer, everyone took advantage of everyone) and wealth was created essentially out of thin air. Now you have shelter, food, and a fire, the world became a better place, and maybe tomorrow you’ll carve a bowl, make a spear, or build a raft. Adding currency into it only makes it easier to exchange so you don’t have to barter, but its the same thing.
Leftists always want you to believe that nobody gets anything unless they stole it from somebody else, that’s how their philosophy works.
You are being a sucker. But, you just don’t know any better.
“You are being a sucker. But, you just don’t know any better.”
Who’s the sucker ?
I know what every country person knows, that you don’t have to take from anyone, you don’t even need money to create wealth. It’s created whenever someone mends a fence, builds a shed, grows some plants on a patch of dirt, mothers a baby, hatches a chicken, sheers a sheep, or any of the other activities that human beings do in the course of a day. The same thing applies to larger industries, wealth is created when people do everything from working the mail room to writing new apps for an iphone, from serving a hamburger to closing a business deal.
That you can’t even understand such a simple concept is what makes you the sucker.
You would be wise to google the definition of a word before you just throw it out there. I suggest up look up the definition of the word wealth.
“I suggest you look up the definition of the word wealth”
I suggest you seek the wisdom of Arkad.
And yet the left somehow believes that wealth is never created even though the modern world is infinitely wealthier that it was 500 years ago.
In 1955 the median income was $5,000. Today it is $55,000, an 1,100% Increase. Tell me again how wages are declining? Do you really think companies want you to have less money? Explain to me who is going to buy their product if they “wipe out the middle class?”
The reason it feels like wages are declining is because higher taxes and governmental regulations (OSHA, environmental, labor, minimum wage, etc..) are driving up the costs of doing business, which drives up prices, which decreases purchasing power. Higher healthcare costs? Again, that’s government over-regulation. Labor unions play a role in this as well, with demands for massive pension and benefit systems driving up costs and even driving companies out of business (see what happened to Hostess just a few years ago).
Companies are not moving factories overseas because they feel like it. They are moving factories overseas because it is actually cheaper to build their products overseas and ship them into America than it is to just build them here in the first place. That is not an indictment of the companies. That is an indictment of an out of control government.
If you want to stop jobs from leaving America and you want to stop the demand for illegal immigrant labor, you need to cut taxes, get rid of the regulations, and get control of labor unions, so it makes fiscal sense to keep the jobs here.
BTW, I challenge you to find any comment anywhere that suggests I support illegal immigration or stupid trade deals like TPP. Populism is not the answer to these issues. Conservatism is. Embracing populism just makes as Democrat-lite.
Don’t throw BS at me by going back to1955 to try to deceive people, and prove a non-existent point. We actually have a decline in median income since 2001;
https://www.statista.com/statistics/200838/median-household-income-in-the-united-states/
Republicans always blame the union. Republicans would rather subsidize corporate America by mandating a low minimum wage, and then make up the difference with welfare and Medicaid for those who work for an non-livable wage. Ship jobs to China, and then complain because people get welfare, Medicaid, and unemployment because YOU took their job.
Cutting taxes without cutting spending? We cannot live in America for the $3.00 per hour Mexican wage.
Virginia is a right to work state, where are all the manufacturing jobs?
The Elitistism created by the Bush 43′ administration is not the answer.
Moving jobs overseas is an indictment of greed.
You wrote: “Tell me again how wages are declining? Do you really think companies want you to have less money? Explain to me who is going to buy their product if they “wipe out the middle class?”
I agree with you about excessive regulations, but median incomes have been declining for years and purchasing power has decreased. For various reasons, the business elites have been pushing open borders for decades – one of which is to simply add to the number of consumers who will buy their products. So what if the middle class disappears? It is no great tragedy – not if tens of millions of lower class folks fill the aisles of Wal-Mart.
Median incomes have declined from 57,000 from right before the housing bubble burst and the “great recession” to about $56,000 where they are today. That’s not a great drop, considering what the economy has gone through and considering how many people got cut from full-time to part-time because of Obamacare. You could also track that decrease right along with Obama letting the Bush tax cuts on the top tax bracket expire. Top income earners are back at the higher taxes enacted under Bill Clinton, and therefore have less money to invest.
As I explained to RR III, the reason your purchasing power is down is because government regulations are driving up prices. The reason the Chamber of Commerce wants open borders is so they can bring in cheap labor to dilute the labor pool, and move their factories overseas to escape the highest business taxes in the world and some of the costliest regulations in the world. If you want to stop that from happening, you don’t adopt the class warfare/tax the “evil” corporations position of the left that caused the problem in the first place. You CUT taxes, and GET RID OF the regulations that make it cheaper to build things overseas and ship them back to the US to sell. Then you seal the border, kick out the illegal immigrants, and re-work those trade deals like NAFTA and TPP to make them TRUE free trade deals, not a deal where we trade them our factories and jobs, and they trade us their low-skilled workers.
“So what if the middle class disappears? It is no great tragedy – not if tens of millions of lower class folks fill the aisles of Wal-Mart.”
I know you know this, but there are a lot of other companies besides Wal-Mart, right? Most companies do not build products designed to cater to the lower class. Most businesses target the middle class because they have more disposable income to spend on things like smart phones, I-Pads, big screen tv’s and all the home improvement products and services that are bought by mostly middle-income home owners.
I really don’t understand why people think that businesses exist to make you poor. Businesses like people with money to spend. Without them, the business can’t sell anything, and they go OUT of business.
If the government cuts welfare, or social security, or any government check program, that would cut directly into the revenue of Walmart.
The last thing Wall St. wants is any cuts in government programs for anybody.
Are you adjusting for inflation? $55,000 in 1955 equates to $44,000 in 2016 dollars, so $55,000 represent’s a 23% increase, not a 1,000% increase. Not an insubstantial growth, but many commodity prices have grown unevenly sonce 1955.
I think I used less “tax the rich” rhetoric and much more “don’t tax the snot out of the middle class.” Ponder this – between my retired military pay and my job I make well over $150K – comfortable, but hardly affluent in this neck of the woods. If my wife were to get a part time job in Wal-Mart she would have to pay 28% Federal Tax, 5.75% VA State Tax, 7.75% Social Security, and 2% Medicare, for a total effective tax rate of 44% for a part time job. Yet if a billionaire in Virginia were to reap in returns on his investments, he would be taxed at a 20% capital gains tax and a 5.75% VA State tax, for a total of 25.75% tax on his “income.” Maybe I am missing something here, but since most billionaires derive their income from capital gains, I think that is grotesque.
I hate to tell you, Mark, but you are not middle class. You are upper class. You are bitching about your wife having to pay taxes in the top tax bracket because your upper class income puts her in that bracket. Without your $150K per year, she would only pay 15% Federal tax on that part time Wal-Mart job.
Then you complain about the guy who is paying 39.6% in taxes, who probably works twice the number of hours you do, and puts his money at risk doing things that create jobs for other people, and complain that he is paying 20% taxes on gains on an investment he made using money he has ALREADY PAID 39.6% taxes on when he earned it. Plus, that is only for a long-term investment, meaning he had to hold it for at least a year before he sold it. If it is a short term investment, he has to pay 39.6% on it.
That is the same kind of class warfare talk we get from Clinton and Pelosi.
Oh really? So in your book $150K is upper class? Wow. Are you Austin Powers and did you just wake up after having been asleep since 1969? Mick, I hate to tell you, but it is now 2016. 150K is not upper class. And the only reason why I make more than 90% of Americans is because I have a military pension, which I earned. And I doubt very seriously that rich people worked twice the hours I did while I served as a military intelligence officer in combat and airborne units during war and high levels of peacetime training.
And you tell me when was the last time a billionaire paid 39.6% on EARNED INCOME? There is a reason why most CEOs work for stock shares and not salaries. And by the way, I do not advocate class warfare. I am fighting the class warfare being waged by the rich against the lower 99%.
You make nearly three times the median income (more than 90% of Americans as you say) and you have the nerve to try and claim you are middle class? What makes that claim even worse is that you gain a big chunk of it from your pension, meaning it is not dependent on the cost of living where you live, meaning you could live pretty much anywhere and still make that much money and take advantage of an enormous annual income in an area with a low cost of living.
“And you tell me when was the last time a billionaire paid 39.6% on EARNED INCOME?”
How do you think these people became billionaires in the first place? Did the billionaire fairy wave her magic wand and magically take money out of our pockets to give to them? In addition, interest income is taxed as earned income. Short term capital gains are taxed as earned income. The facts are that the top 1% of earners pay half of all income taxes, and the top 5% pay about 70% of all income taxes.
“I do not advocate class warfare. I am fighting the class warfare being waged by the rich against the lower 99%.”
You claim you don’t advocate class warfare, yet every argument you make sounds like you are quoting Elizabeth Warren. What makes your “conversion” to populism even funnier is that it comes in support of a billionaire who just got elected president and is calling for massive tax cuts in the top tax bracket, cutting the capital gains tax, and doing away with the estate tax. These are all the things that you find “grotesque.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2016/11/30/for-3-8-tax-cut-push-2016-payments-to-2017/#66ba4a0e2964
Instead of bashing successful businessmen, we should be teaching our kids how to be more like them instead of coddling these little snowflakes and teaching them to hate hard work and demand more “free stuff” from the government,
Mick – if Jeanine allows, I will do a follow up article to continue this discussion. But as far as my pension goes and being able to live anywhere, my profession is intelligence analysis which limits me to a few areas in the country – and I can guarantee you that they are all high cost areas where $150K will not allow you to join the country club (actually, I make more than $150K). And there is one point I will leave you with which I have learned over my life – just because a politician has a (D) after his or her name or considers himself or herself a progressive, does NOT AUTOMATICALLY mean that the person is wrong.
I also think, Mick, you are caught up in playing a game of semantics. Most people would consider my salary upper middle class, and not upper class. But even if I were upper class, I am not rich. I am in no position to lavish politicians with hefty campaign donations, nor do I stand to benefit by the open borders/more consumers-at-any-cost positions currently being pushed by the rich, or more accurately, the super rich. Whether one makes $50K or $150K, he or she stands to lose due to the positions advocated by the super rich donor class, and that is what populism is all about.
The aims you ascribe to populism are commendable, but are the results? From what i’ve read, families with more than three children will see tax increases. Exemptions for charitable giving will be reduced. The biggest breaks go to corporations and the wealthy, resulting in a loss of federal revenue as the next administration embarks on an enormous spending plan for military and transportation infrastructure.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/for-some-in-middle-class-trump-plan-would-mean-tax-increase/
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/analysis-donald-trumps-tax-plan/full
You write: ” From what I have seen in my lifetime the “rising tide” advocated by
conservatives does not lift all boats, but rather only the biggest
yachts.”
Blasphemy. Turn in your Certified Conservative ID card.
We’re gonna reduce corporate taxes to near zero, cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans, and all the benefits of those tax cuts will tinkle down to the little boats. The fact that tinkle down didn’t work under Reagan or two Bushes is irrelevant because Trump will make it happen.
Trump and his Wall Street CEO Cabinet will make America great again . . . just wait.
Old Redneck – Since I cannot muster enough imagination to produce the requisite levels of self-delusion required to dwell in Liberal La La Land, I will never be a leftist. But you are right. I have turned in my Certified Conservative ID Card, because what conservatism is in 2016, I do not want any part of. IMHO it all went downhill after the 1986 Amnesty Act and the failure by Ronald Reagan to deliver on his promise to control the border and illegal immigration in exchange for the amnesty. It never happened. Furthermore, the Weak and WASPy Bushes with their “kindler, gentler America” and the disastrous “compassionate conservatism” did major damage to conservatism. So, when it comes to trashing that family, I am with you 100%. In fact, Bush the Younger and Dumber was the worst president in my lifetime.
You supported the Queen of Wall Street, so STFU. Did you enjoy the video of Obama ridiculing the idea of keeping Carrier jobs in the United States.
Go dream of a borderless world with unlimited free trade…
The election was like a month ago, aren’t you bored w/ trolling this forum yet ?
As to the point about the dumbing down of education, I was very disappointed to hear that my old High School English teacher was comparing the rise of Hitler to the rise of Trump. I just hope she limited that chat to her social circles and alumni, who aren’t graded by her anymore, and that she doesn’t rile up her current students in the classroom.
I wouldn’t count on that.
What a lousy comparison. Better would be compared to the other community organizer in chief who share an oratorical glamour