Kevin Drum

This news is not new—it's based on a survey done more than a year ago—but it's news worth repeating anyway. Here are Larry Bartels and Benjamin Page in the LA Times today on the political priorities of the very rich:

Our research found that the biggest concern of this top 1% of wealth-holders was curbing budget deficits and government spending. When surveyed, they ranked those things as priorities three times as often as they did unemployment — and far more often than any other issue.

....They were also much less likely to favor raising taxes on high-income people, instead advocating that entitlement programs like Social Security and healthcare be cut to balance the budget.

....While the wealthy favored more government spending on infrastructure, scientific research and aid to education, they leaned toward cutting nearly everything else. Even with education, they opposed things that most Americans favor.

....The wealthy opposed — while most Americans favor — instituting a system of national health insurance, raising the minimum wage to above poverty levels, increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit and providing a "decent standard of living" for the unemployed. They were also against the federal government helping with or providing jobs for those who cannot find private employment.

....Unlike most Americans, wealthy respondents opposed increased regulation of large corporations and raising the "cap" that exempts income above $113,700 from the FICA payroll tax. And unlike most Americans, they oppose relying heavily on corporate taxes to raise revenue and oppose taxing the rich to redistribute wealth.

A large body of research, from Bartels and others, demonstrates that lawmakers respond to the desires of the upper middle class and the wealthy, but not much to anyone else. So if you're wondering why official Washington is all atwitter over budget deficits, but doesn't seem to care much about unemployment, this is why. It's because that's what rich people care about.

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John Dickerson argues that if President Obama wants to make a grand bargain with Republicans, he needs to stop saying nasty things about them. I don't happen to agree about that,¹ but it's a reasonable enough suggestion. It's easier to do a deal if you're not constantly trash talking your opposition.

But this I don't get:

The premise of the president's recent outreach to Republicans is that he might be able to build connections that would lead to a grand budget bargain. This relationship relies on trust. Republicans must trust that if they take a political risk to support changes in the tax code that would bring in revenue for deficit reduction—which will hurt them with their supporters—the president won't undermine them further with their voters by making them look like chumps.

....Speaker Tip O’Neill and President Ronald Reagan were often pretty mean in public....But the two men could work together because they had a certain level of trust. In today’s world, this is how a Republican senator can say glowing things about New York Sen. Chuck Schumer. Schumer may regularly demagogue Republicans, but in a deal his word is solid. He can be trusted.

Wait a second. Dickerson is saying it's OK for Schumer to be nasty because, apparently, being nasty doesn't reduce trust. What reduces trust is going back on your word, and Schumer doesn't do that.

Presumably the same is true of Obama. So what makes Dickerson think Obama has broken his word? His entire case is built on the claim that when Obama met with Senate GOP leaders a couple of weeks ago, he said he'd reduce his attacks on Republicans. Then, a couple of days later, he accused them of wanting to "gut Medicare or gut Social Security or gut Medicaid." That's an attack! It proves he can't be trusted to keep his word.

This is pretty thin gruel. Here's what Obama actually said:

You know, what I’m saying to them is I am prepared to do some tough stuff. Neither side's going to get 100%. That’s what the American people are looking for. That’s what’s going to be good for jobs. That’s what’s going to be good for growth.

But ultimately, it may be that the differences are just too wide. It may be that ideologically, if their position is, “We can’t do any revenue,” or, “We can only do revenue if we gut Medicare or gut Social Security or gut Medicaid,” if that’s the position, then we’re probably not going to be able to get a deal.

That's not an attack. Obama wasn't accusing Republicans of wanting to gut entitlements, he was just saying that if that's where they end up, then a deal probably won't get done. I don't think that even John Boehner could work up any fake outrage over that.

Look: Republicans are going to pretend to be offended at everything Obama says. That way, if there's no deal, they've got a ready made excuse. But nobody should take this faux offense at face value. It's all part of the game.

Trust, on the other hand, is lost when people don't keep their word. And maybe the Obama administration hasn't done that. But if so, I'd sure like to see the evidence. As near as I can tell, both sides have been relatively trustworthy in the usual sense of the word. They just disagree really strongly, and that's prevented them from making a deal. There's no need to look for anything more complicated than that.

¹Why not? Two reasons. First, I think political deals are mostly the result of horsetrading, outside pressure, and ideological positioning. Rhetoric doesn't play much of a role. Second, being nasty is part of making Obama's case with the public, and if he deploys his attacks effectively that puts pressure on Republicans. I suspect this outweighs the downsides of being nasty.

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Every day, the Wall Street Journal plasters a demand at the bottom of my screen that I try Portfolio, their fabulous new investment tracker. I have no interest whatsoever in this. When I go to the LA Times website to get the day's crossword puzzle, I first have to sit through a 30-second video ad. I subscribe to both of these newspapers.

Is it too much to ask that if I spend several hundred dollars a year on your product, my online access should be at least as convenient and non-annoying as the print version? I don't think so! But maybe I'm just a fossil.

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Those of us who love Google Reader are, naturally, upset by Google's decision to kill it. But it's not a hard decision to understand. Google gave away Reader for free and doesn't make any money from it. Anytime you use a product like that, there's a risk it will go away. But what about more important products? Those are safe, aren't they? Ezra Klein isn't so sure:

In fact, I'm starting to worry a bit about Gmail, which is at the core of pretty much my entire life. I know, I know — Gmail is safe. The data it feeds into the Google mainframe is extremely valuable to the search giant. They won't let anything happen to it.

But I'm a heavy user of Gmail. And so I've been buying more space on Google's servers. Recently, I hit 30 gigs — and learned Google won't let me purchase any more room. The service which once swore I'd never have to delete a message now tells me my only option is to delete gigabyte after gigabyte of past e-mails.

Actually, I think the problem lies elsewhere. Ever since the birth of the PC, you've taken a risk when you buy a new product. If it succeeds, it'll be around for a long time. If it doesn't, it will die. Google isn't breaking any new ground here.

What's different is that Google's products are all cloud-based. When Google Reader goes away on July 1, that's it. It's gone. If it were an ordinary bit of software that I'd installed on my PC, this wouldn't be a problem. It would keep on working for years even if it never got another update. I'd need to replace it eventually—because of an OS upgrade or a desire for new features that finally got too strong—but I'd probably have years to work that out.

Ditto for my email program, which is client-based. It will never run out of space, because I can always buy a bigger hard drive if I want to. If it goes away, I'll need to find a new email program, but I'll have plenty of time to do it.

Of course, there's a price to be paid for this: I don't have access to my email archive everywhere I go. If I traveled a lot, that would be a huge drawback.

My preferred solution is to use old-school client-based software, but to store all data (or perhaps mirror all data) in the cloud. Sure, my storage provider might go out of business, but that's an annoyance, not a crisis. I just have to find a new cloud storage provider and move my data.

This problem is that this still isn't as easy as it should be, and anyway, for lots of applications the cloud application model provides some compelling advantages. But I'm leery of it. I don't like being forced to upgrade whenever Google decides I should. (When they release a new version, that's what you get the next time you start up your browser. If you don't like it, tough.) I don't like having my software go away completely if Google tires of it. I don't like wondering if Google will put limits on how much data I'm allowed to keep. I don't really even like Google having access to all my data in the first place. One way or another, I figure they're going to use it for marketing purposes, no matter how loudly they swear they never will.

The cloud is not your friend. Or maybe it is, but at best it's a fair-weather friend. We've been seduced by free, and seduced by the cloud. We should probably all step back from the brink.

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