The Ratchet Effect

by David Atkins

Kudos due to Digby and Atrios for keeping a keen eye on the planned cuts to middle class benefits, made in exchange for cuts to wealthy benefits that will quietly disappear when the bright spotlight is off after the Presidential election.

This phenomenon is part of what Hacker and Pierson refer to as a ratchet effect: one in which the institutions of government are squared more and more firmly against the interests of the 99%, usually through policies made through toothless "compromise" measures. Think big tax cuts for the wealthy with "expiration" dates that are never really meant to expire, in exchange for little-noticed middle-class tax cuts that barely make a dent. Or trading short-term unemployment benefits and treaties for long-term tax cut extensions. Or changing the structure of Medicare and Social Security in exchange for closing easily re-insertable and malleable loopholes in the tax code. Or handing over the entire health insurance market to private industry in exchange for more universal coverage that continues to increase in cost regardless. Or the recent institutional acceptance of the 60-vote filibuster threshold, which makes real reform to help the 99% almost impossible, but is accepted by Democrats partly because it helps them stop things like Social Security privatization should Republicans take a Senate majority--without realizing that Social Security and programs like it will die a death of 1,000 cuts without institutional reform.