It's time to bury the idea that demography is destiny, once and for all

It's time to bury the idea that demography is destiny, once and for all

Demography is almost destiny for women voting. They don't like Trump. Catholic women liked Clinton until she answered incorrectly on a partial birth abortion response to Trump, not the moderator. 

Clinton got record turnout from Black women. Black working class men did not come out like they did for Obama. Not with Kaine on the ticket. For Booker, they would have come out. They may or may not now. It depends on how they view Harris. 

Being CATHOLIC is a demographic too. 

Demography may not be destiny, which is why it is so important. Biden needs to be careful about the Catholic vote on abortion. After the election, he needs to face it dead on by publicly scolding the USCCB for supporting a federalist policy that amounts to bringing back Plessy, as well as nurturing the dream that abortion be treated as infanticide lite. There is no getting around the due process concerns that view brings. Supporting a position that you know is impossible is a three letter word. It's called a lie.

Class is an important issue. There are four. The dependent class (which contains retirees, dependent workers and the working poor whose social benefits exceed their tax obligations) contained 40 million filers in 2017. The last year data were available.

The working class contains The working-class numbers 64 million households and pays $223 billion in taxes. Together, the dependent and working classes have $3 Trillion dollars in adjusted gross income (which does not include benefits paid, for the most part).

The middle class contains roughly 29 million households, almost all paying income tax. Their adjusted gross income is $3.5 Trillion. They pay $432 Billion in income taxes.

The upper class contains 7 million households, all of whom file, make $4 Trillion and pay $947 Billion in income taxes. 

This table shows how debt assets are held (using 2016 data, the last available survey). The working class hold no bonds, not much in bonds backing savings and checking accounts, no direct bond holdings, 25% of financial assets backed by bonds and almost $4 Trillion in bonds contained in the Social Security and other government trust funds. These are mainly held for the dependent class who receive these benefits (there is no other way to track who owns such bonds than who is paid by them.

The middle class contains roughly 29 million households, almost all paying income tax. Their adjusted gross income is $3.5 Trillion. They pay $432 Billion in income taxes.

The upper class contains 7 million households, all of whom file, make $4 Trillion and pay $947 Billion in income taxes.

This table shows how debt assets are held (using 2016 data, the last available survey). The working class hold no bonds, $1 Trillion in public debt bonds backing savings and checking accounts held by the Federal Reserve, no direct bond holdings, almost $400 billion, or 10% of bonds backing financial assets and almost $4 Trillion in bonds contained in the Social Security and other government trust funds. These are mainly held for the dependent class who receive these benefits (there is no other way to track who owns such bonds than who is paid by them). 

The middle-class bank deposits account for $1.3 Trillion in Federal Reserve bonds, half a trillion dollars in direct bond holdings, $1 Trillion in bonds backing investment accounts and $1.2 bonds in trust funds held by the government to distribute to high-income retirees.

The rich 5% of taxpaying households, or 8.5% of total households, hold the rest of the public debt and very little of the Social Security trust fund. This is why they fund studies examining how to control federal retirement costs. This translates into about half the bonds held by the Fed, almost all the bonds held by individuals or $3.7 Trillion, and two-thirds, or $2.4 of bonds held by financial accounts.

Just to put things in perspective, the revised Pareto rule is that for every $10 of income, $5 goes to 90% of any grouping, with the other $5 held by the top 10%. Studies show that it is the 90th percentile which keep up with inflation. Everyone else loses ground. The bottom 9.9% get most of their income from working. The top 0.1%, 143 thousand households, get more than half of their money from capital returns (table not shown). Being wealthy is having enough wealth to not work at all. 

This table shows the distribution of income which validates the 90/10 rule. Note that just over 1,400 households bring in 2.5% of total AGI. This is almost half of the income going to the top 0.01% and a quarter of the income going to the top 0.1%. I call the elite .001% the mega-donor class. There are few major donors to politics or the Church (or NCR) in the working and middle classes.

Finally, we get to race. I cut off the middle class at 25% (or 20% of households), because of who does or does not own bonds. 

As stated earlier, the working class, both white and everyone else, own no Treasuries, although they do hold low value savings bonds. The working minority working class holds almost $800 billion of the $900 billion in bond assets held by the Fed, 10% of the financial assets and a quarter of the Social Security fund assets (estimated, not counted, based on AGI).

The minority share of middle and upper-class debt assets proves most interesting. These are the people who own all the bonds. Minority bondholders hold essentially no bonds. Their share could only be calculated by noting how many Whites held bonds and subtract this from the total. In other words, they hold the rounding error. They hold 10% of the bonds held in financial assets and a slightly larger share of accounts backed by Federal Reserve bonds. 

Minority citizens hold few bond assets. This is why most middle and upper-class minority households vote Democratic – or should do so. Why any white working-class households vote Republican is an oddity that cannot be explained by their economic interests. Upper class whites are likely never-Trumpers. 

Reports are that the Trump Super PAC, which he lives on through its spending money on his properties, is heavily financed by Moscow, through Lev Parnas and Igor Furman (according to their indictments). The donor class will only give Trump money if he wins.

Demography may not be destiny, but economics and racism are. If it were not for racism, the White working class would all be supporting Biden.