SOAKING THE RAYS OF PROSPERITY
NOT!
While drinking a tall tropical concoction with the little umbrella in it called “TAX CUTS” for the rich.
When you hear Republicans talk about extending the tax cuts to the very wealthy you would think that those very tax cuts brought in a lot of prosperity, encouraged job creation and made everyone more affluent. That is the biggest bunch of crap I have ever heard.
We go through periods of ups and downs in the economy. We go through times when unemployment is high and then we swing back into “normalcy”. But has anybody bothered to see if these periods of prosperity and low unemployment actually coincided with the times the Republicans were at the helm? The answer is NO because if you look at those hard times, if you compare job creation as opposed to job losses you will always find that we have as a nation fared much better under the Democrats.
The Teahadist-Republican mantra is that the rich and the corporations are not investing the money presently because the uncertainty of taxes and the prospect of paying more….NOT once more. They are simply hoarding it or worse yet; they are holding the investments back in order to make the Democrats fail.
Mark Sumner sums it up like this:
Just so long as you remember that:
- Decreasing taxes at the top does not provide incentive to spend. It provides incentive to hoard. Low taxes on the extremely wealthy do not drive the growth of the economy or the expansion of employment. What they create is the incentive for a very few to accumulate vast wealth. Which creates an imbalance, declining demand, and reduced opportunities for everyone -- including at the top.
- There's no connection between being extremely rich and creating jobs. Just as many, if not more, people became extremely rich by destroying jobs. Ask Jack Welch. Productivity does not have to be the stalking horse of job destruction, but in a society where short term gains are everything, the ax man gets fat.
- Low tax rates in the United States have not promoted jobs "staying home." More jobs have moved out of the country as tax rates have fallen. The two are at best very loosely coupled.
- Low tax rates for the wealthy don't create a "rising tide." They don't raise all boats. Instead, they are a flash flood that scuttles the economy for the benefit of a few. In this flood median income, the one that most people makes, actually declines. Do it long enough, and the economy drowns.
- Tax rates at the top of the income scale are at record lows. The number of American children going hungry are at record highs. This is not a coincidence.
- Promoting the idea that rich people need another handout doesn't make you a champion of opportunity. It makes you a quisling for oligarchs.
So, if you are buying into what the Republicans are saying, I say to you get off the beach and go in the shade because you are suffering from sunstroke. Prosperity and affluence will never come under the Republicans because they like unemployment and they like economic crisis…how else are they going to find cheap labor in a sea of unemployment? How else are the corporations going to swallow up little companies that are drowning in this sea of failure? The rich like it and they want to keep it that way…by all means, extend the tax cuts and better yet, tell them they don’t have to pay any taxes at all…we the poor and the middle class will do that for them; while we patiently wait for the rich to throw our way the crumbs from their table…that brings them validation, that says that they are rich and we are not…that makes them feel superior and better.
So, go on keep sipping that tall drink of prosperity while the rest of us, 98% are drowning in a sea of misery about to be eaten up by the sharks of ignorance and superstition; don’t throw us a lifeline, just keep feeding us lies and hateful rhetoric and we will learn to swim or die.
I am curious as to what is going to be like for Teahadist-Republicans when a Chinese “Dear Leader” moves into the White House because they called in our debt. Will they then resort to 2nd Amendment options?
Greg Dworkin proposes:
Does anyone actually have data showing that giving millionaires tax breaks creates jobs? How many jobs would that be? For all those who claim that it is so, please provide the data so we can have an honest discussion about it.
A table would be nice: in the left hand column, the income bracket and the tax breaks based on the current rates; in the right hand column, the number of jobs created. You know, what we in the old days used to call "facts" to back up the argument that we need to bail out the rich because they need to get richer because "everyone knows" that what follows is jobs (aka "trickle-down theory" or Reaganomics). Really? If it worked so well, where are the jobs now? And did you know who said "money was all appropriated for the top in hopes that it would trickle down to the needy"? That was Will Rogers during the Great Depression. Some ideas never die, no matter how many times they fail.
