Democrats Are Killing the American Dream

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Source: Wall Street Journal (behind paywall).

The writer takes a dim view.

President Biden’s American Families Act makes one political reality officially clear: The Democratic Party has given up on the American dream.

The Biden proposals—coming as they do with the Democratic progressives’ rise to power—present the American people with a once-in-a-lifetime decision about what kind of country they want to live in for the next half-century.

This isn’t about the culture wars or standard Keynesian stimulus spending. The Biden plan is about public policies that will redesign American society.

The redesign is instigated by the creation of new, expensive and permanent entitlement programs specifically for the middle class. This should be unnecessary since the middle class by definition isn’t poor. It should also be undesirable given the well-documented history of societal damage entitlement programs have caused (see the Moynihan Report, for starters).

But unnecessary and foolish policies appear to be the new normal on Stumble Joe’s watch.

Published by John Todd Roberts

Published

46 thoughts on “Democrats Are Killing the American Dream”

  1. I read as much of the article as I could before hitting the paywall limit. It was more than enough. Pure doctrinaire rubbish totally divorced from economic reality. And although the claim is that the objection is not to “culture wars,” the author managed to include totally irrelevant references to the 1619 project in the first few paragraphs.

    Here are the actual elements of the Biden Family Plan. Which of them is such a bad idea that poor little “conservatives” have now got their hair on fire?

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/04/28/fact-sheet-the-american-families-plan/

    Andwer: None.

    The REAL problem is that these reforms are long overdue and very popular so “conservatives” are flailing in their efforts to trash it.

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    1. What a bullshit fluff piece from the white house. First it gives credit to Biden for things he didn’t have a part in like vaccinations, economy reopening and employers trying to rehire. What it failed to point out is that no one wants to go back to work because of Biden’s free money. Then it goes on to list a slate of free goodies but fails to account for where the money will truly come from. His jobs claims are crap as well. Pure liberal socialist trash gift wrapped with a BLM bow.

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        1. Ha, you are one to talk. Not even a nice try at claiming others are doing what you are guilty of on a daily basis. Growup, try civility yourself and call back….

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      2. “ Julie Morita, executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a former Biden transition adviser, said that while the Trump administration was successful in vaccine development, Biden’s focus on providing states funding and resources to actually coordinate and deliver vaccines has been crucial to the rollout.”

        “ But a look at the vaccine’s development and distribution during Biden’s first 100 days shows giving credit to either administration is more nuanced: While Trump made a high-stakes gamble that led to record-breaking vaccine development before Inauguration Day, the Biden administration formalized a national strategy that helped the nation’s patchwork of health systems execute a vaccination rate of more than 3 million shots a day.”

        https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/politics/2021/04/27/joe-biden-100-days-does-donald-trump-also-deserve-credit-vaccine/7227430002/

        Both administrations played key rolls in vaccination.

        “ When President Trump took office in January 2017, the national debt stood at $19.9 trillion. In October 2020, the national debt reached a new high of $27 trillion. That’s an increase of almost 36% in less than four years.

        The national debt reached a new high of $28 trillion less than two months after President Trump left office.”

        “ https://www.thebalance.com/trump-plans-to-reduce-national-debt-4114401

        If the Biden tax plan goes into effect, the expectation is payback in about 10 years for the infrastructure, stimulus and family plan.

        There was no effort, or even consideration, by #45’s administration to payback the tax cuts or other spending hikes. Hence, the debt climbed under Trump.

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        1. Who are you trying to kid? Well over $3 trillion during Trump was bipartisan stimulus and more for prepurchase of vaccines. Biden spent $2 trillion and started pushing for well over 4 trillion in socialist fluff in his first 100 days. The vaccination program was already in place, including distribution, BEFORE Biden. To have some Biden transition advisor claim others is not a surprising attempt to prop up Biden as having done something. All Biden HAS done is stifle retiring and economic recovery.

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          1. Who was president when the first stimulus plan was enacted? Who controlled the Senate?

            If you want to not count the stimulus, there is still about a 6 trillion more debt increase up through October 2020.

            Who was president then?

            Finally, was there any plan to cut the debt under Trump? He promised to cut it hugely.

            The Biden tax plan is designed to pay for the spending over the next ten years. By then we should have better roads, water supplies, daycare, etc. With the last administration we would just have more debt, bad roads and lots of uninsured.

            The Democrats are offering legislation for healthcare, infrastructure, education and some parts of an immigration reform.

            Republicans: still counting ballots for the 3rd or 4th time in AZ; changing election laws; dumping a true and faithful Republican, Liz Cheney, because she won’t support the Big Lie; sweating Dr. Seuss books and Mr Potato Head’s gender.

            Message for the GOP? Lead, follow or get out of the way. And buy more potatoes.

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          1. I think the coordination and support for the states were not as good as they should have been. I recall you complaining about the early rollout in VA. But most states were also having problems. Yes, a few standouts like West VA and one of the Dakotas made finger pointing at the others a national sport. But the reality was that the majority were either not getting enough, or didn’t have a network setup.

            The current administration saw 200 million doses given as advertised.

            As I recall, Trump was too busy to even mention the pandemic, never mind any other duty the president usually tends to. So I take with a grain of salt any “plans” his CDC put into place.

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          2. The States that did better did so by IGNORING the Federal guidelines.

            But you are deflecting the question. What did Biden change from what Trump left in place? Sure, as production ramped up, there was more to distribute, but in what specific way do you think Biden improved on the plan?

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          4. The devil is in the details. Trump bungled the details of distribution. That is not unexpected in an administration where bizarre doctrinaire loyalty trumps competence.

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          5. What, specifically, did Biden do differently from the plan in place before Jan 20 that made a significant difference?

            It’s pretty easy when the supply has grown to exceed demand.

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          8. What did Biden do differently? He managed a complex task competently. Trump did not. The results speak for themselves. Trump failed miserably to meet the targets HE set. Biden well surpassed his.

            Why the Trump failure? His “plan” amounted to . . .
            1. Order vaccines
            2. Have them sent to the states
            3. Hope for the best.

            As I said above, the Devil is in the details. Trump ignored the details.

            https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22213208/covid-19-vaccine-rollout-coronavirus-distribution

            And, oh yeah, tried to block legislation to provide states with extra funds to deal with the effort needed.

            https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/31/trump-officials-lobbied-to-deny-states-money-for-vaccine-rollout/

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          9. Israel, the UAE and Bahrain do not have states. The US does and the division of powers under the 10th Amendment leaves the last mile on vaccines to the States.

            The States had 10 months to prepare and didn’t.

            In Virginia, at least, lack of funding was not the problem, it was the incredibly complex appointment system established to prevent the Elderly from getting vaccinated ahead of younger public employees.

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          10. There is nothing in the Constitution restricting the ability of the federal government to take the lead and take action in a national emergency such as a pandemic killing people by the thousands every day. The idea that there is such a constraint is simply false.

            But, okay. The “plan” was to leave it to the states. Fine.

            But that “plan” of leaving the distribution to the states does not relieve Trump from responsibility for the failure of the “plan.” As you say, the states had 10 months to prepare. If competent people were managing an actual plan they would have seen that deficiency developing and would have taken action to fix it. Instead, Team Trump did nothing and, in fact, was busy trying to block legislation to get money needed to where it was needed if the “plan” was going to work.

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    2. RE: “Here are the actual elements of the Biden Family Plan. Which of them is such a bad idea that poor little “conservatives” have now got their hair on fire?”

      Don’t care. I wrote the post to emphasize the unnecessary and foolish policy of creating middle class entitlements. You may want to talk about something else, but not I.

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      2. Why are childcare, preschool and scholarships so unnecessary for the middle class?

        Many, if not most, family incomes are from multiple jobs. Yet, as Americans we say we cherish the family. Keeping childcare and preschool affordable is a huge help for both the families and the job market.

        We subsidize all sorts of businesses such as farms, energy, manufacturing with either direct payments, tax loopholes, or both. The “business” of families is not any less critical to our economy and competitiveness.

        IMHO

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        1. RE: “Why are childcare, preschool and scholarships so unnecessary for the middle class?”

          It depends on your definition of hardship. Most of the middle class can afford to shape their own lifestyles. I find it hard to describe that as hardship.

          One can imagine all sorts of justifications for nice-to-haves, but that doesn’t make them necessities.

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          1. “Most of the middle class can afford to shape their own lifestyles. I find it hard to describe that as hardship.”

            I am sure you have a cite for that.

            Besides, nothing is mandatory.

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    3. I object to every element, but just for one poison pill, the education and curriculum for all teachers from pre-school through 4 years of college would be placed under the control of the Department of Indoctrination(formerly Education) giving the Federal government control of what our children are taught from age 3 on.

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      1. Considering the state of education among Americans, old and young, the indoctrination of ignorance has done enough damage. We used to lead the world, now most Americans can’t even name the three branches of government. And the students rank low in world tests.

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      2. If you object to every element of then clearly Biden is on the right track.

        And, your characterization of the financial aid for the education sector is laughable nonsense. Department of Indoctrination? Good grief! You afraid a bunch of radicalized Head Starters are coming to steal your things if the federal government helps states provide universal preschool?

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          1. What people SHOULD do and what they CAN do are very different things for vast and growing numbers of people in this country. That is a simple fact of life that your doctrinaire a priori thinking just sweeps under the rug.

            When someone cannot provide for their family because they cannot afford daycare, the government IS “doing them a favor” by making it possible for them to work. Your goto answer – poor people should not have kids – is a non-starter for decent people. Besides simple decency, we are facing demographic issues where more kids are sorely needed by all of us.

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          3. “When you remove the consequences of irresponsible behavior, you guarantee more irresponsible behavior.”

            We are discussing President Biden’s programs to help families so by “irresponsible behavior” you mean having children if you are poor or might become poor at some time? Right?

            So, children whose parents cannot make ends meet should go hungry, unclothed, unhoused, uneducated and without medical care to teach their parents a lesson. That about it?

            Again, high marks for fully owning your – let’s be kind and say – extremist views.

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  3. Since we’re all good friends here, I’ll share an anecdote on why middle class entitlements are helpful and necessary in 2021:

    My wife and I have two kids, ages 2.5 and 1.5. KG starts at age 5 so we have over 3 years until both kids are able to attend public schools. We both work full time. The mortgage on our 1,700 sq. ft. 3 bedroom house is $2,000 a month. Most daycares in this area are anywhere from $800 to $1,500 a month per kid–and that’s if you can even get them in. My wife makes considerably more money than I do, but only my job provides health insurance so we’re kinda stuck there. Even with that (pretty good) insurance, we are still paying off the youngest kid. It was a perfectly normal birth with no complications. I am paying student loans as well.

    Things are different now. My generation makes less and has to contend with higher cost of living than your generation did. All this, despite the fact that we are more educated, more skilled, and more productive than any generation that preceded us.

    I’m not complaining–we are doing better than many people my age. I just want to illustrate that we have done everything the “right way” and even we would benefit tremendously from subsidized childcare.

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    1. If we examined your expenses closely and compared them as best we could with those of a family like yours 30 years ago, we’d probably find that much of higher costs you are dealing with correlate very closely with the growth in government over the time period. Entitlement programs were the biggest part of that growth.

      To the extent that entitlement programs drove up the cost of living for all of us, it doesn’t seem wise to argue that we should want more of them.

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      1. While entitlement spending has increased, let’s remember which are the biggest entitlement expenditures—Medicare and Social Security. That’s the baby boomers aging into these programs.

        The more telling trend lines are stagnant or declining wages for all but the top decile and an explosion in housing and car prices.

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      2. RE: “While entitlement spending has increased, let’s remember which are the biggest entitlement expenditures—Medicare and Social Security. That’s the baby boomers aging into these programs.”

        What difference does that make? It doesn’t change the correlation with growth of government that I described.

        As for stagnant or declining wages, we recently saw a 6% increase in wages at the low end of the middle class. The implication of that result is that market-based policy reforms are more effective than government-based policy reforms in meeting the needs of the people.

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        1. “It doesn’t change the correlation with growth of government that I described.”

          Correlation? Isn’t that the thing that does not prove causation? As in this case. Increases in outlays for Social Security and Medicare have NOTHING to do with the financial squeeze most families have been experiencing. And they would be squeezed beyond breaking if they had to support their aging parents and pay their medical bills. Than God for progressive programs that allow seniors to live with dignity and without fear of medical bankruptcy. You know, people like you.

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        2. About that 6% . . .

          Nothing to do with rising minimum wages? As in Virginia. Nothing to do with those government stimulus and unemployment payments that “conservatives” say are making people unwilling to work at shitty jobs for shitty wages? You cannot have it both ways. Is it the market or is it Joe Biden pushing up wages?

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  4. The headline of this post, “Democrats are killing the American Dream” is interesting in that the Republicans are doing everything in their power to destroy American democracy. If successful, the idea of the “American Dream” won’t mean a hill of beans.

    Yet it is the Democrats pro-people programs that are destructive.

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  5. It’s not the democrat’s fault, although they are the party of leftist radicalism and communistic propaganda, it’s all of us, how we learn, work, behave, and share, raising our children for tomorrow. For instance, if a couple complains about the problems in society, but send their children to propaganda “daycare”, how are they preparing for a better tomorrow?

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