Krugman in Invincible Ignorance takes on the GOP myths that tax cuts are the solution to everything and pay for themselves.
"But anyway, look: it’s been a long time since Morning in America. We’ve now been through two two-term administrations, one of which raised taxes, the other of which cut them. Which looks like it presided over a more vibrant economy?"
Graphs in the article. And it doesn't look like people can accept it.
1 comment:
Don't blame Bush, he was simply following in the footsteps of the greatest President in our nation's history......Ronald Reagan
Ronnie Raygun had a favorite saying that.... "the nine most dangerous words in the English language are....
I'm from the guvment (sic) and I'm here to help."
Reagan was such a good communicator (propagandist) that his message, that the root of all of our problems begins and ends because of too much government, and by default, too much government spending, still resonates to this day as a reflexive and collective response from the base of the Republican party, and no pointy-headed, liberal elite professor's irrefutable evidence will convince them otherwise.
So Reagan's "solution" was to get rid of regulation to free the private sector from constraints, and to lower taxes, especially on the "investor class" who will surely use their monies in productive pursuits to the benefit of all (trickle down economics).
George W Bush simply pulled out Reagan's playbook from the 80s and repeated it.
The only problem is.... it doesn't work. If it did, we wouldn't be in as bad an economic shithole as we currently find ourselves.
Voodoo economics is what Bush the elder kindly called it. To my knowledge, no reputable economist will defend the Reagan or Bush tax cuts as truly stimulative for the economy, or deficit reducing. They were and are simply a means to divert (i.e., legally steal) true wealth (that which arises from the actual production of a good or service) from the working and middle classes to the wealthly.
It was simply stealth class warfare wrapped in bullshit patriotic propaganda, about the exceptionalism of America.
The United States of America has been on a slow (fast?) downward spiral economically for the last 30 years and seems currently unable to reverse course. I voted for Obama in the hopes of a true course correction, but that ain't happening.
The middle class is quickly shrinking, and along with it, the democratic and economic backbone that made the US the leading nation in the world between 1900 and 2000.
The next century surely belongs to someone else, most likely China.
So it goes.
TT
ps. Sorry to be such a downer, but I honestly don't see how this changes in the next decade.
Of course, America has a way of fixing what's ails her, even if it gets messy along the way (e.g., the civil war, the mass labor movement, the civil rights era, etc...).
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