Republicans have the solution!
It’d be funny, I guess, if they weren’t serious. But, of course, they are. The Republican solution for fixing the ailing economy?
The Economic Freedom Act of 2010 — introduced by Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) — proposes deep tax cuts favoring the wealthiest in America, a reduction in regulatory oversight and the elimination of a federal tax on the estates of millionaires, which will allow wealthy investors to escape taxes entirely on a significant portion of their income.
Republicans say the bill will create jobs where President Obama’s policies have failed to do so.
Because, of course, Bush’s tax cuts for the rich created a bajillion jobs, right? And the rich are just suffering so much, right now. Sniffle. Jordan and Chaffetz also stated that the tax cuts would prevent any future oil spills, reverse the global warming they don’t believe in, divert any asteroids that may head toward earth some day, cure all kinds of cancer, male pattern baldness, and make Lady Gaga go away.
Now, to understand the theoretical underpinnings of this, I’d suggest one from a typical shill-for-the-rich over at The Cato (“Promoting Social Darwinism under the guise of liberty”) Institute. Mitchell states:
The White House may be playing smart politics by engaging in class warfare, especially if President Obama succeeds in blaming the recession on tax cuts that took place five years before the downturn began. But for those who care about prosperity more than politics, what really matters is that the economy is soon going to be hit with higher tax rates on productive behavior.
Well, putting aside the fact that the economy was more or less anemic, with very little growth throughout the Bush administration, that the said tax cuts did nothing to kick the economy into overdrive, that the upper classes that Mitchell defends have been waging “class warfare” for decades and that when Mitchell talks about “productive behavior” and competitiveness, he’s really talking about a race to the bottom, several questions remain. I linked to him moreso to show it’s the same-ol’ same-ol’ that’s floating around out there, with none of the “maybe we just might be wrong about this” that’s needed when one keeps pushing failed ideas ad nauseum. They’re simply not adding anything new to the discussion at this point.
Maybe I’ll even ask or try to answer a few shortly, but let’s look at the way Republicans really push this – like most things in fundamental libertarianism (just like fundamental Marxism), it looks good on paper, but then that pesky thing known as human nature kicks in. The Repubs and Cato folks seem to push this notion that if you give more and more tax cuts to the rich, they’ll automatically invest it and create more jobs, not just, you know, spend it on stuff to already enrich their privileged lives. It doesn’t seem to work out that way. If it did, the economy would be booming with all that freed-up-death-tax billions, wouldn’t it? Trickle-down is really pissing on the rest of us, as the last thirty years have shown us (more on that below the jump).
