Deficits & Deception

"We all do better when we all do better."
-- the late U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone, D-MN (1999)

The reason why W's 2001 tax cuts will expire at the beginning of the year comes directly from the way they became law... The same Senate rules that allowed them to be enacted with a filibuster-proof simple majority, also prohibit anything that increases the deficit for longer than 10 years.

In other words, the Republican majority of 2001 knew they were creating deficits, while the present day Republican minority of 2010 denies that would be a consequence of extending those tax rates.

But Washington is all about rewarding your patrons... None of whom were rewarded more handsomely during the previous decade than the already very wealthy: the Top 2%.




So why is it that a dollar spent on food stamps bubbles up to create more than five times the impact of a dollar trickling down from a tax cut to the rich?

It's basically because the poor pour their dollars into buying things, thereby fueling the 2/3 of the economy that's related to consumers. The rich, on the other hand, speculate on things they think will make them richer in the overblown casino economy that imperils the entire financial sector... Not enterprises that create jobs.

For all the rhetoric surrounding small business, more than 70% of U.S. businesses are either part time side projects or full time sole proprietors who have no employees in either boom or bust.

What creates jobs in any sized business is people wanting more goods or services than can be produced by the existing labor force... Our economy is, therefore, inherently demand-side and resistant to the alleged stimulative benefits of supply-side economic theory.

Chris Matthews with two House members of opposing views:



Videos: MSNBC

"Every class struggle is a political struggle."
-- Karl Marx, "The Communist Manifesto" (1848)