Know Your Audience

Vice President Joe Biden’s statement at Davos illustrates the problems I have with the man. As reported by CNBC:

Vice President Joe Biden delivered an epic final speech Wednesday to the elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The gist of his speech was simple: At a time of “uncertainty” we must double down on the values that made Western democracies great, and not allow the “liberal world order” to be torn apart by destructive forces.

So far, so good. This is the part I had a problem with:

Biden didn’t merely urge the world leaders at Davos to maintain the status quo. He warned that the reason for the pressure on the democratic order is the rise in income inequality and the hollowing out of the middle class, as the rich get richer and people in developing nations see their lives gradually improve.

He said the top 1 percent is not paying their fair share, and as a result we are seeing social instability increase.

As Clark Clifford said of Ronald Reagan, the man is an amiable dunce. Saying that to a domestic audience would be fine. Saying it to an international audience is an error.

Anyone in the United States with an income greater than $32,400 is in the global top 1% of income earners. Did he really mean to say that Americans with incomes over $32,400 should be taxed and the revenues given to the governments of sub-Saharan African countries, as a group the poorest countries in the world? I doubt it.

It reminds me of Shimon Peres’s wisecrack that foreign aid consists of taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving it to rich people in poor countries. IMO income inequality is best understood as a factor primarily within countries and only secondarily between countries.

9 comments… add one
  • Roy Lofquist Link

    The world is on the path to perdition! Uh, who was in charge for the past eight years?

  • michael reynolds Link

    Roy:

    Oh, I can answer that:

    – The man who saved us from the absolute financial meltdown left behind by George W. Bush.

    – The man who got us moving forward on climate change despite the reality-denying lies spread ceaselessly by the Republican Party.

    – The man who was in charge during our longest sustained expansion.

    – The man who put the hit on Bin Laden.

    – The man who extended medical insurance to 20 million previously uninsured.

    – The man who caused our stock to soar in the world after the international embarrassment of George W. Bush.

    You know: Obama. Obama, they guy who spent 8 years dragging us out of the ditch the GOP put us in. That guy. Hopefully we can find someone just as talented to haul us out of the sinkhole the GOP and its imbecile voters are driving toward now.

    It’s what Democrats do: we repair the godawful messes the Republicans make, and then endure the endless dishonest, hypocritical attacks from Republicans blaming us for their stupidity and berating us for not cleaning up after them quite quickly enough.

  • Roy Lofquist Link

    Michael,

    That’s one way to look at it. Perhaps another way is to note that there are more Republicans in office now than at anytime in the last 90 years or so. If you are correct then somehow the message got garbled somewhere along the line.

  • Gray Shambler Link

    Sea levels are down two cm. CO2 Increases have begun to level off.
    I think it’s safe to say, the one who has come, has saved the planet.
    If only He, at this point, could stay in power, things would be fine.

  • Jan Link

    Michael, the recession was officially over 6/09. Usually after recessions the economy goes into overdrive. Instead, the economy languished, never reaching beyond a lackluster GDP. All your points about obama’s success are seen thru the eyes of a partisan voice, rather than the common man/woman. That’s why the Democrat party is so out of touch and a real disappointment to the non-elites, like me.

  • Guarneri Link

    Easy, Jan. That’s his primal scream therapy. We wouldn’t want him up in a bell tower.

  • Andy Link

    Michael,

    President Obama is not a King and did not have the power to save us from a financial meltdown; he did not write the Obamacare bill; nothing was accomplished on Climate Change except more discussions and non-binding, unrealistic agreements; the bin-Ladin hit was a brave decision (ie. politically risky) but ultimately made no strategic difference; the economic expansion had little to do with any Presidential action (Presidents don’t control the economy, the Fed, Federal spending, etc.). The one thing you are right about is that internationalists – particularly in Europe, loved him – especially compared to Bush or Trump. And from what I’ve read most seem pretty disappointed that the actions of the US government didn’t live up to his rhetoric.

    To caveat all that I’ve long held the view that Presidents control very little outside of a few areas and giving them credit or derision for things like economy (and economic statistics) and anything the Congress is actually responsible for is just wrong. They have some amount of influence but not control. The only things Presidents really own hook line and sinker is foreign policy and that’s been a decidedly mixed bag.

  • Some months ago I ran across a graph from the CBO that I haven’t managed to relocate since. It showed that actual job growth (I think) during the recovery tracked very closely with the “No action” scenario in their studies from late 2008, early 2009. The graph showed four lines: “No action” (by the federal government), conservative estimate (the smallest estimate of job growth in the presence of the ARRA they found reasonable), the likely estimate (the estimate of job growth in the presence of the ARRA they thought most likely), and actual job growth. The lines that were closest were “No action” and actual.

    Let that sink in for a while. Either the CBO was wrong and continues to be wrong (since its present estimate are based on its past estimates), in which case no conclusion can be drawn about the effect of the ARRA, or they were right and the ARRA was immaterial to what happened. That’s what I said at the time: it was tardy, misdirected, and insufficiently concentrated on immediate stimulus.

  • Jimbino Link

    Speaking as a single, childfree man, I don’t remember agreeing that I should be overtaxed and the proceeds of that theft distributed only among my fellow Amerikan married couples and breeders.

    Indeed, if I had a vote, I might well vote to give some precedence to the foreign poor.

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