When you hear the tea partiers whining that our freedoms are being stolen - the only theft of our freedom has been by the right. When you hear the tea partiers wailing that we 'need to take our country back;? The people we need to take it back from are the republicans who want to take it away from the majority of Americans and to give it -- YES, GIVE IT -- to their special interest buddies in whose pockets they serve, the few, the greedy, the top one or two or three percentile holders of wealth in this country.
Nothing could represent this better visually than this graph from, among other places, data gathered by Larry Bartel posted in a WaPo column by Ezra Klein about the widening gap - no CHASM - of income and wealth in this country, impoverishing the majority of us while benefiting very few, fewer all the time. I encourage Penigma readers to follow Klein's article, and the links to the original articles and data. No one should vote in the 2010 or 2012 elections without reading this first here.
 |
| Larry Bartel's data |
Back in 1921, song writers Gus Kahn and Raymond Egan wrote "Ain't We Got Fun". A part of the lyric goes, "There's nothing surer. The rich get richer, and the poor get -----children." Nothing could be surer, over and over, under Republican 'Ignorance-Only Sex Education' and demonstrably failed Trickle Down /Supply Side Economics
Here it is in black and red......and blue. Democratic policies benefit the entire country, INCLUDING the wealthy. Republican policies make the income gap larger, and deeper, and more crushing.
On Sunday, September 12th's Face the Nation, Rep. John Boehner argued for extending the Bush era's failed policy of tax cuts to the wealthiest few. He argued that while those tax cuts would not benefit 97% of small business owners -- that is 9 - 7 - %!, they would benefit the 3% who receive 50% of the income from those businesses. Boehner was arguing that those wealthiest 3% would somehow create job growth.
But the numbers don't show that -- unless you believe in conservative / republican math which substitutes numeric values, and replaces them with undiluted, unsupported bullshit ideology. Because what Boehner DIDN'T tell you, on Face the Nation or anywhere else - but undoubtedly knows -- is that the data, (in this case from the sources like the IRS, and the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation) -- is that the people Boehner wants to gift with lower taxes are NOT for the most part small businesses in the sense most of us use the word. Boehner is dodging behind a semantic fraud, a verbal cheat. The majority of the people in that 3% that Boehner wants to exempt from a reasonable and fair tax rate (in the context of income tax rates historically, and periods of growth and prosperity in particular) are NOT going to be generating job growth; they aren't even small businesses in the sense most of us use the word. They are wealthy individuals in highly paid specialty fields like law and medicine; they do not expand either manufacturing, or new services which hire people. They do not invest their money in job-generating areas. They tend to either save it, or buy things like expensive art. Why? Because what drives investment in new business, or expanded business activity that creates jobs............is DEMAND. Without demand FIRST, there is no investment. Who would build something, take the risk of new or expanded business without first having some assurance or reasonable expectation that there would be buyers for it? The answer is, simply, no one does.
When those tax advantages go to the lower income and wealth percentiles, they tend to spend it, not save it, not put it in big buck non-job producing items. They spend it in businesses and on purchases which stimulate the economy, and which produce growth.
In Obama's first year in office, the deficit, even with stimulus spending -- and in part, because of it -- the deficit went DOWN 8%. Boehner would add millions upon millions to that deficit, and expect you, the ordinary tax payer, and your children and grandchildren, to make up that deficit.
Remember that, the next time you hear the right wailing and gnashing their teeth about Democratic spending and taxation policies. They are lying to you. It is the Republicans and their policies which are responsible for this deficit, largely. It is the Republican tax policies which are stealing from the majority of the citizens of this country - their security, their financial freedom, their reasonable pursuit of happiness. It has been under Republicans that the greatest threats to rights like habeus corpus and privacy have been assailed.
There is a very large devil in the Republican details. Don't let crooks like Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner gloss over those details, don't let him hide the devils lurking there. Don't vote Republican in order to make the wealthy few richer --- and you and your own family poorer under the fraud of being pro-business. The only thing the positions of these people are consistent with is being bought and paid for by very wealthy, very greedy special interests looking for more tax-break hand outs, to those who need it least, at your expense. Those wealthy few? They would get the same tax breaks proposed by Democrats for their first quarter million or so of income; just not the same or greater tax breaks above that.
While I could write 40 paragraphs on this, much of it off the cuff, I'll try to be a bit more succinct (for once :)). This meme', this theory, of cutting taxes to the richest few to create jobs has been the Republican Big Lie for 30 years. It has not created jobs, it has not stimulated the economy, and when we talk about 'stimulus' spending let's remember that George Bush had his 'booster shots' in 2006 and 2007 (which were tax cuts) and which grew the deficit, and which didn't work. Time and again this has been tried, time and again, it fails. The Republican leadership knows full well it won't work because it doesn't create demand to make the ultra-wealthy even more ultra-wealthy. They already have enough money to buy anything they desire - no, the single goal has been and continues to be to allow the ultra-wealthy to accumulate vastly larger fortunes at the expense of schools, infrastructure and US based jobs.
ReplyDeleteFurther, and probably more telling and more importantly, the cuts to tax rates in the 80's (going from 70% top tax rate to 35%) and then to capital gains tax rates (and dividend rates) in the late 90's and 2000's, gave the very wealthy INCENTIVE to cut wages and benefits to workers because those profits which USED to be taxed away and therefore they didn't have much incentive in trying to capture for themselves and so were willing to reinvest in the company or spend on benefits, NOW those profits were much easier for them to capture and keep for themselves.
The bottom line is this "spend less", "tax less" and jobs will grow BS/lie/deception/garbage hasn't lead to less spending, because entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security are seen as bedrock social fabric protections, and at state levels things like schools are seen as fundamental needs, so instead 'tax less' has merely and really meant tax less right now, creating massive deferred debt for future generations, while infrastructure falls apart. It has ultimately ONLY lead to lower taxes on the richest of Americans, not lower taxes on the rest of us, and through that change in tax code, it has also lead directly and indirectly to the destruction of the middle-class by incenting the wealthy to crash wages and benefits so that they can keep all for themselves.