Cutting Taxes Hurts Our Economy.

Here's a lie. Well, more accurately a misleading statement. "When ever an administration cuts taxes the tax revenue goes up." Right wing pundits tell us that as well as staunch conservatives. What is conveniently left out of the statement is the fact that tax revenues have gone up every single year since they were instituted. The reason? As the population continues to grow so does the tax revenue. If you cut taxes, revenue goes up. If you increase taxes revenue goes up. If you leave them alone, revenue goes up. Get it? It's not that the conservative right is lying necessarily, it's just that they aren't giving you all the facts.

So you say, " If you raise taxes on the big corporations' profits, they'll just raise the prices of their goods in order to pay them." Yup, they will a little but, go back and check out the history of annual inflation. Companies raise prices whether or not they are being taxed at a higher rate. Notice that from FDR up until Reagan took office taxes on the rich were very high. When corporations and the wealthy's profits were highly taxed, it caused them to re-invest their profits into their companies. This in turn expanded their businesses, created more jobs, and helped keep our economy healthy. After Reagan's tax cuts Corporations and the very wealthy took their untaxed profits out of their companies, put them into Market speculation and Swiss bank accounts. They did not create jobs or expand their businesses, (at least not in the U.S.) rather they significantly downsized their domestic workforce and exported jobs overseas, ultimately contributing to the decline in our economy. In addition, when corporations and for that matter the middle class get huge tax cuts, we see a decline in workers salaries. Let me explain: If you work for $10 an hour and after taxes you only get $8 an hour. Your employer understands that you will work for $8 an hour if you weren't taxed. So if there is a 20% reduction in taxes your employer would not be a very good business person if he kept you at 10 when he can get people to work that same job for $8. Wages either slowly decrease over a period of time as we've seen in the automobile manufacturing industry, or rapidly decrease by firing and re-hiring workers who will work for less. The middle class takes it in the rear. Welcome to the Milton Friedman's deranged wacky wet dream called Free Market capitalism. That by the by has failed miserably wherever it was put in place. (See Chile during the Pinochet regime)

Now don't misunderstand me, along with taxes comes the responsibility of those with the purse strings to invest in our country. Before everything had to be deregulated and privatized, our government used to invest in our infrastructure. We built sewage systems, schools, Dams, highways, and college education was affordable. We invested in research and development especially in the field of science. Over the past thirty years, the wealthy have reaped the benefits of deregulation and tax cuts while the middle class has been systematically robbed of their wealth by deregulation and tax cuts. By wealth I mean, equity in their home, company sponsored health care, and their pension plans. All of which have all but disappeared and now we find ourselves facing the worst economic times since the last Republican Great Depression.
It was the conservative Republican Herbert Hoover and his robber baron buddies who lowered taxes and deregulated anything and everything allowing mergers and monopolies that threw us into the first depression. It took FDR and his new deal to pull us out of it. He raised taxes and invested in infrastructure that put people back to work. Within a year of instituting some of his programs the unemployment rate went down 9%. That is an astounding figure when you consider that in 1935 unemployment was a staggering 25% in 1933.

Now are Tax and Spend a liberal policies a panacea? No, it isn't perfection. There are still those corrupted politicians who will attach ear marks and practice wasteful spending but IMHO it's a damn sight better than the corporate welfare we're on the hook for now. The amount of tax payer money spent on "Liberal social programs" you know the rant: Welfare mothers, funding for the Arts, etc. etc. All of those combined pale in comparison to the $750 billion + the tax payers are on the hook for so that Billionaires won't loose any of their investments. (FDIC only insures $250,000 of your bank savings. Billionaires have a shit load more than that in their bank.)

JFK pushed through that tax increase to take us back toward FDR/Truman/Eisenhower revenue levels, and we continued to build infrastructure in the US, and even put men on the moon. Health care and college were cheap and widely available. Working people could raise a family and have security in their old age. Every billion dollars (a half-week in Iraq) invested in infrastructure in America created 47,000 good-paying jobs as Americans built America.

Can you imagine how much better off our country would be if over the past 30 years we would have invested in ourselves? Schools, Roads, Power grids, renewable sources of energy,and health care for all citizens, (I can afford my tax obligation if I don't have to spend over $4,000 a year in medical insurance premiums. Duh!)

DaG out