Long Wait
Corporate profits in the United States have reached an all-time high. Despite this, the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high; companies aren’t hiring, and wads of hoarded corporate cash so far have not translated into jobs (but executive bonuses are back to pre-recession levels). Can we now finally dispense with the trickle-down theory? Of course not. Republicans (and some Democrats) still insist that allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans to expire will be bad for the economy, because reducing taxes for the rich inevitably produces jobs, even though that crackpot theory is provably false. The Bush years, despite a massive giveaway of the treasury to the rich, produced some of the slowest growth on record, even in the years before the Great Recession. In fact, in the decades since trickle-down became the mantra of the Reagan administration and the de facto basis of the economic policy of this country, the only measurable effect has been the startling growth of income inequality in America. The top one percent now takes in a quarter of all income, up from single digits just 30 years ago. Middle class income has been flat while the wealthy have seen theirs skyrocket.
The add insult to injury, the party that triumphed in the last election wants to cut the deficit, not by repealing the unpaid-for tax breaks for the rich, but by slashing spending, starting with refusing to extend unemployment benefits. Those darn unemployed evidently are the real cause of the recession. If they hadn’t foolishly lost their jobs, there would be no unemployment. Now those irresponsible greedy bastards want to worsen the deficit.
I’ve wondered over the years how Americans can be so easily persuaded to vote against their own self-interest. The narrative from the Right, which seems to have hoodwinked a majority of voters, goes something like this: government bad, taxes bad, evil liberals spending out of control, time to cut big wasteful government down to size. Starting with those awful earmarks (less than one-half of one percent of the budget). Yeah! What they conveniently don’t say is that only three areas account for the vast bulk of government spending: defense, Social Security and Medicare. Conservatives win on defense, so they won’t make serious cuts there. That leaves the safety net. Think for a minute. Do the wealthy rely on Medicare and Social Security for their economic survival? Uh, no. WE need those programs, but they certainly don’t. The real story here is the massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich, in the disguise of fiscal responsibility. We’re going to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans by cutting programs that benefit the poor and the middle class. If you dare to object, you are indulging in (gasp!) class warfare. As Warren Buffet, one of the richest men in the world and possibly the most honest, points out, there IS a class war in this country, and the rich are winning it.
Actually, they’ve already won. To the victor the spoils. And three decades later, we’re STILL waiting for some of it to trickle down.
