Meanwhile, the current gaggle of GOP presidential candidates are repeating the same Reagan to Bush-era catechism as if they have learned nothing from history and still can't read a balance sheet.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
How Bush-Era Tax Cuts Damaged America
Still moving house, I don’t have time for a longer post with commentary, but this issue is important enough to merit a consciousness-raising discussion. You can read the source document here. The graphs are self-explanatory:
Meanwhile, the current gaggle of GOP presidential candidates are repeating the same Reagan to Bush-era catechism as if they have learned nothing from history and still can't read a balance sheet.
Meanwhile, the current gaggle of GOP presidential candidates are repeating the same Reagan to Bush-era catechism as if they have learned nothing from history and still can't read a balance sheet.
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This is the kind of thing that needs to be debated vs. the latest "dick" joke. Thank you for posting this. - Charlene
ReplyDeleteAll those facts and figures are nice but they are "ancient history" to the voting public. Just how short is their attention span? Well yes, Obama got bin Laden... but what has he done for us lately?
ReplyDeleteMy predictions: The Conservatives will dust off the old bromide, "It's the economy, stupid" and pawn it off as new. The country will fall for the "tax cuts = jobs" formula and take back the white house and congress.
I'm very sad to agree with you. Democracy doesn't work in a country of idiots and even less so now that they can sell anything to anyone and truth is a commercial product.
ReplyDeleteThanks Octo for the graphs -- a dinosaur can only marvel at graphs, being much too simple-minded to make any of its own.
ReplyDelete"He that stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord. Thus spake Zarathustra." Well, if James Joyce's Buck Mulligan hadn't meant that remark tongue-in-cheek, he would make a good Republican presidential candidate, wouldn't he? There's not much left but rapaciousness and cruelty when you get to the bottom of the rickety barrel that is right-wing ideology.
No, of course tax cuts aren't an automatic answer to every social and economic ill, but you'll never get that truth through the skulls of these dumb bustards. Like the walls of hell, those skulls are 4,000 miles thick.
What is needed is a charismatic GOP leader who gets it. Unlikely? Yes. But as you say, dino, the left will never get that truth through the skulls... Unfortunately "conservative" has come to stand for "me first, first." What the US might really need is a true conservative revolution, starting with a redefinition of conservatism, which I believe could be a good thing.
ReplyDeleteThe real problem is rampant, runaway corporate capitalism, which is not to be confused with the old bourgeois, middle class capitalism. This is a new managerial aristocracy, and much more endemic and pernicious, as EVERY modern system now runs on that platform—especially government and education.
What is truly puzzling to me is that anyone could fall for the tax cuts = jobs fallacy after spending the last decade being hammered by reality, with skyrocketing unemployment and the steady erosion of the middle class. It doesn't require intricate knowledge of economics or even math, just consciousness and the ability to observe one's surroundings. Is this really so hard?
ReplyDeleteEdge:
ReplyDelete"The real problem is rampant, runaway corporate capitalism, which is not to be confused with the old bourgeois, middle class capitalism."
Too fine a distinction for the kind of rabble who vote for it, but really the science of propaganda is so advanced that facts don't matter at all.
It's all sadly true. If you had a program with these graphs on giant boards and invited anyone from the GOP to explain why, in the face of the facts, they believed that the tax cuts would save the economy, they would turn their backs on the graphs, spout the same old party line about socialists, communists, etc and by the next day there would be a viral email about how Obama is trying to take "our" money and "give" it to poor people. And half the country would buy in.
ReplyDeleteSad and pathetic but, there it is.