To paraphrase St. Robert of Hibbing, some of us are prisoners, and the rest of us are guards.
Okay, I usually like to live by the rule of reading through an entire thread before posting, but I simply cannot maintain a train of thought through hundreds of posts at a time, so I’m going to start here, then continue…
You’re assuming that everyone’s “time to be wealthy” will come. You know full well that’s absurd in the extreme.
Ah yes, the “magic” year. Are you aware of under what circumstances the “modern” Republican Party came to be, and why?
It was of a pure fictional story, invented by Jude Wanniski to allow Republicans to paint themselves as “Santa Claus”, to counter what they believed was the image the populace had of the Democrats. Wanniski called it his “Two Santa Claus Theory” and pitched it to Ronald Reagan.
You see, the idea was to turn 7,000 years of economic truth on its head with the bizarre and completely made-up theory of “Supply Side Economics”. There was no evidence that there was any truth to such nonsense, because it was exactly that – nonsense. But all they had to do was create an argument and convince people that if they believed them, they’d be better off financially. It was a perfectly executed CON JOB with the American people as the marks. * By 1974, Jude Wanniski had had enough. The Democrats got to play Santa Claus when they passed out Social Security and Unemployment checks – both programs of the New Deal – as well as when their “big government” projects like roads, bridges, and highways were built giving a healthy union paycheck to construction workers. They kept raising taxes on businesses and rich people to pay for things, which didn’t seem to have much effect at all on working people (wages were steadily going up, in fact), and that made them seem like a party of Robin Hoods, taking from the rich to fund programs for the poor and the working class. Americans loved it. And every time Republicans railed against these programs, they lost elections.
Everybody understood at the time that economies are driven by demand. People with good jobs have money in their pockets, and want to use it to buy things. The job of the business community is to either determine or drive that demand to their particular goods, and when they’re successful at meeting the demand then factories get built, more people become employed to make more products, and those newly-employed people have a paycheck that further increases demand.
Wanniski decided to turn the classical world of economics – which had operated on this simple demand-driven equation for seven thousand years – on its head. In 1974 he invented a new phrase – “supply side economics” – and suggested that the reason economies grew wasn’t because people had money and wanted to buy things with it but, instead, because things were available for sale, thus tantalizing people to part with their money. The more things there were, the faster the economy would grow.
. . .
Ronald Reagan was the first national Republican politician to suggest that he could cut taxes on rich people and businesses, that those tax cuts would cause them to take their surplus money and build factories or import large quantities of cheap stuff from low-labor countries, and that the more stuff there was supplying the economy the faster it would grow. George Herbert Walker Bush – like most Republicans of the time – was horrified. Ronald Reagan was suggesting “Voodoo Economics,” said Bush in the primary campaign, and Wanniski’s supply-side and Laffer’s tax-cut theories would throw the nation into such deep debt that we’d ultimately crash into another Republican Great Depression.
But Wanniski had been doing his homework on how to sell supply-side economics. In 1976, he rolled out to the hard-right insiders in the Republican Party his “Two Santa Clauses” theory, which would enable the Republicans to take power in America for the next thirty years.*
Two Santa Clauses or How The Republican Party Has Conned America for Thirty Years
Jude Wanniski - The Two Santa Claus Theory And in fact, we have 30 years of empirical evidence that this “theory” is crap. Rubbish. Absurd. A LIE.
In fact, Lower taxes on the rich don’t lead to job growth, but exactly the opposite. *But while the idea of bringing more capital into the domestic economy sounds like a good thing, it won’t likely mean much for the average American. In 2004, Congress approved a one-year tax holiday as part of a jobs package, resulting in companies bringing back $362 billion. But, as Fortune’s Tory Newmyer pointed out in February, studies have shown that most of the funds went to shareholders. Even while Congress passed several rules to make sure the funds would get invested back into the companies, not very much went to research, investment or hiring.
If the cost savings from lower taxes don’t go to new investments or more jobs, could they at least lead to higher wages for workers, as Ryan’s plan suggests?
If history tells us anything, that’s unlikely. The effective corporate tax rate has been steadily declining for decades. Corporations paid more than 49% of their profits in federal taxes in the 1950s, 38% in the 1960s, 33% in the 1970s and 25% in the 1980s. All the while, U.S. wages have been stagnant for years even as productivity has risen.*
Lower corporate taxes won’t create more jobs – CNNMoney
So why do people – in fact, so many people – still believe this in spite of study after study after study proving it’s flat out false?
Because they’re stupid?
No. Because they’ve been taught to believe that. And much like any other thing we’ve been raised to believe, those beliefs are extremely difficult for people who hold them to let go of. They are believers. And believers have faith in their beliefs, no matter how many facts you provide to show them their beliefs aren’t based in truth.
Just as so many Evangelicals cling to a “young earth” theory and deny evolution, so do many Republicans cling to Tooth Fairy “Trickle Down Economics”.
Though some, like Dick Cheney (IMO) might fall under the heading of evil, and some, like GWB (IMO) might be stupid, and others still, like Bachmann (IMO), might be fanatical, I truly believe that most are driven by blind faith. See above.
No, they don’t, in spite of your insistence.
It’s really not difficult to observe the fact that Republican fiscal policies have resulted in the wealthy becoming exponentially wealthier, the well-off becoming middle class, the middle class becoming poor, and the poor becoming destitute.
It’s the reason that, in spite of recording the highest corporate profits on record, while we’ve seen a 385% increase in income in the top 1/10th of 1% of Americans since 1970, over the same period, 90% of us have seen our income remain completely flat.
Yes. Would you rather we go back to calling Republicans who vote against their own economic self-interest stupid?
I didn’t think so.
My heart bleeds for you. I’d love to not pay for any school with my tax money, since I don’t have any children. I guess you don’t see how detrimental to society putting that theory into practice would be.
Blind faith is a form of fanaticism, IMHO.
And yet you support a party that has been enacting laws that force girls and women to strip down, spread their legs and have a dildo-sized wand covered with a condom, shoved into their vagina for the purpose of forcibly showing them the cellular growth in their uterus before they’re allowed to have a legal medical procedure. You don’t seem to mind that indignity, even though it applies to every case, including those of rape and incest, so girls and women can be violated against their will twice.
Stunning.
And sickening.
I’m perfectly okay with that. Considering President Obama pulled a fast one on the Republicans in this deal, I’ll look forward to the terms of the “trigger” being enforced. Bring on the gigantic cuts in military spending!
Fair enough.
The sad fact is America is undergoing a dangerous and new change. We have a huge unemployment problem. It will get worse because the jobs will not return. They will continue to be moved out in the future. It will get bigger and bigger. The jobs will be of higher level.
There will be no move to provide unemployment for those who will not be able to find jobs. Many people will be without much hope. Foreclosures will accelerate. Safety nets are being ended.
The Republican policies will make the economy weaker. Just cutting harms demand. There is no real interest to create a better economy because Obama would be the recipient. By the time the election comes along, the economy will be shedding more jobs. It is a dangerous game. The American people will be the losers.
The people at the top of the Republican party have a plan, a vision of America. that is different than the one we have lived in for decades. It will concentrate power and money in the hands of those who already have huge power and money. It will be a different world. They already have concentrated wealth in a way that has not been approached sine the Gilded Age. But that is not enough for them. They want more. They will get it. The Repubs and baggers will do it for them. They will live to regret their stupidity.