I'm working on a new T-shirt/bumper sticker line with the following - "Trust-Fund Kids Unite.... Save the Bush Tax Cuts!" I hope it exposes the lunacy that has infected our country. I hope it helps the middle class and the working poor just how badly we've all been conned.
We are living in an anti-science, anti-intellectual era where consideration of empirical evidence and thoughtful analysis are deemed off limits. We just went through the worst economic downturn since the great depression that was primarily the result of a failed economic philosophy its supporters once called Ricardian Equivalence. That term, and that theory, didn't stick in the early 70's so they re-branded it Supply-Side Economics. Well, that supply curve barely shifted and the deficit ballooned so they had to go with Trickle-Down Economics. Sad thing is, nothing trickled down and pretty much everything went to the very top. They had no choice but to make it a cult of personality and go with Reagan-economics after that. Reagan was endearing and optimistic but did not caring the requisite intellectual gravitas to validate a fraudulent economic theory. Then Grover Norquist and his band of merry neanderthals said they simply wanted to "starve the beast". Yet, that beast needed to fund a $2 trillion war of choice and a new $1 trillion Medicare Part D program. Throw in a sprinkle of deregulation of the financial markets and a dash of additional tax cuts for the very wealthy and you got the Great Bush Recession.
Over and Over again we are repeating the same mistake of handouts to the rich with the illusory expectation of a magical economic boon even though nearly all economists - liberal, moderate and progressive - agree that such an expectation is purely asinine. It's just stupid.
We are doing this over and over again because the people that are most able to influence these decisions (i.e., the CofC, the Wall Street execs, the big oil tycoons, etc.) are the very same people that reap all the benefit of these policies. You get nothing. They get it all. Inequality approaches historic highs.
Mr. Joe Blow, Rough-and-Tough, Hard-Working American... you've been had! You've been conned! You were dumb enough to believe this shit and buy into a completely dis-proven economic theory which benefits the ultra-wealthy at your expense. Hope you like all those distraction they threw at you - someone is coming to take your guns!, those GDFs are taking over!, watch out for the gays and lesbians!, etc. - because that's all you have. They took everything else out from under you while you were pissing around on these issues which will never have any real practical implications in your life.
America has been the subject of a great deception which almost led to a great depression a year and a half ago. The depression is coming. It's inevitable now. An economy cannot survive for the benefit of all when only the very few have a real stake in the economic outcomes.