Bedtime Stories to Chill the Soul
I’ve been hearing say that Republicans are going to try to scare people about how horrible things will be if Democrats get control of even one house of Congress, or even (say it quietly) take back the White House in 2008. Apparently, there will be, amongst other nightmarish scenarios, tax increases and military weakness.
Let’s take a look at those, shall we? Tax increases. Like the one in 1993 when Clinton took office, I presume? Think back to that time, and the years following. Were you, or the people you know, devastated by sky-high tax rates? Were you bled dry? Or, by chance, did tax levels not affect you much differently than they do now? And considering that incomes for most Americans were better under Clinton than they have been under Bush 43, is it possible that if you were paying more in taxes, that it was simply because you were making more money when adjusted for inflation?
Democrats have promised to “raise taxes” only insofar as getting rid of the ludicrously extravagant tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. And if you want to bring the Clinton tax hikes up, consider that they too were aimed primarily at the wealthy–who, by the way, made out like bandits under the booming Clinton economy. And that the Clinton boom (stoked by the Internet industry, which in turn owed more to Al Gore than to any other politician) along with Clinton’s well-targeted tax increases, as well as his sound fiscal/budgeting policies, led to actual federal budget surpluses–as opposed to the past six years of horrendously massive, uncontrolled Republican pork-barrel spending and skyrocketing deficits and debt.
Also considering that job creation has, for the past century, been highest under Democrats and just as consistently lowest when Republicans are in office, it is most probable that whether you are rich or poor, blue-collar or white-collar, you will be doing better economically under a Democrat than you would be under a Republican.
As for military weakness: let’s see, military recruitment and retention are at historic lows. The military is stretched so thin that practically any military venture now would be impossible without Iraq immediately collapsing. And what have we gained for that, and for the loss of 2,432 American lives in Iraq? Is al Qaeda dying out? No, their recruitment is soaring, in stark contrast to our military’s. Is Osama bin Laden behind bars? Nope. Saddam is, but we know that he was never really a threat to us, he was contained and not even remotely worth the price Bush has forced on this nation.
In short, Bush has achieved nothing, even worse than nothing, and in the process has shredded our military and led to our being less prepared now to fight any new conflict than we have been in living memory.
So, under Democrats, we’ve had good jobs and budget surpluses. Who would want to return to those horrors, and give up the jobless growth, surging gas prices, massive deficit spending, and rampant corruption we now enjoy? Especially when Democrats would actually (no!) repeal all those tax cuts for Paris Hilton and Bill Gates!
Under Clinton, our military was ready and able, and was directed well enough that we stopped ethnic cleansing and atrocities in the Balkans, at minimal cost to us in lives, money, and readiness. But why do that, when there was no oil to be found, and no corporate coffers to be filled with hundreds of billions in special war spending? Why go back to those days of woe when we see how well Bush has done for the men and women in uniform? Who gives a rat’s ass about twisting intelligence and lying repeatedly to trick the public into a war that’s become a quagmire, when Democrats might force the military to accept gays into their ranks? Have you no priorities?
And if a healthy military, good jobs, and fiscal responsibility aren’t enough to scare the crap out of you, then wait till Karl Rove gets finished telling you about gay marriage and separation of church and state! You’ll go screaming into the night, I tell you!
From the onion, a quote from George Bush’s inaugeral address:
“Our long national nightmere of peace and prosperity are now over.”
The Onion, a satire of real news, was just joking of course. But proved true anyway.
Democrats economic policies are based on more firmly established theories: Namely that predictability (stability) if more important than low taxes when it comes to generating jobs. Think of it this way: Say you are rich, therefore George Bush has given you a million dollars in tax breaks since he’s been in office. But the markets have been uncertain, and so, instead of investing in a factory to make widgets, you put you money in cds and government bonds (like Bush himself did). Bush can give rich people all the money in the world but they won’t invest if the markets are unstable, and they won’t invest if there is no demand for widgets.
Second, supply side policies only work in an inflationary recession: when you have too many dollars chasing too few products. Bush came into office in a deflationary recession: Two few dollars were chasing too many products, that is too say there was too much supply and not enough demand. Bush’s supply side policies were counter productive. Normally this would have sent the economy into a tailspin, but in stepped Greenspan with lower interest rates, and in stepped China’s central bank willing to buy our debt at lower interest rates – by lowering interest rates people refinanced their houses, releasing some purchasing power out onto the economy and maintaining enough demand to keep the economy from plunging.
Third: It could easily be argued that Clintons tax increases weren’t high enough. The tax increases were made in an attempt to manage an economic boom along the lines of Galbraith’s theories. The only way to avoid a bubble economy and keep it from popping is to let air out of the balloon. Since stock and investment markets are fueled by wealthy investers, it is necessary in the build up to boom times to divert money out of the markets into taxes. Around 1996 Clinton/Rubin (treasury secretary) foresightedly tried to do just that but Republican’s fought it tooth and nail. The tax increase wasn’t big enough. To much air (money) went into the balloon untill the Bubble burst.
Galbraith’s philosophy is that Government increase taxes during booms and deficit spending during busts in order to level out the economy. Clintons were trying to follow this philosophy. The philosophy works because a leveled economy is less risky to invest in. There fore if you were the proverbial rich person, you may have less money in hand, but what money you do have, you are more willing to invest because its less of a risk.
Finally, supply side policies take forever to kick in because, in addition to investors being gun shy in an unstable environment, it takes longer to build factories that creat the jobs that people will then earn money in and go out and then creat more demand. But the whole idea is fictitious. If you give rich people money, they will be happy to take it, but you have done so without them having to earn it, and rich people will not invest it willy nilly, they didn’t get rich allowing their money to trickly out of their pockets, down to everyone else, they got rich by capturing money and keeping it and holding it there for themselves.
As a result, we now have an unstable world that is creaking everywhere we look. It will be a significant miricle if we get out of the next few decades without any epic disaster, simply because George W. Bush became president.
His ascendancy was a huge, HUGE, H U G E, set back for mankind.
Just breathtaking.