As the old joke goes, an out of touch CEO is informed by a junior manager that the company is losing money on every sale. The big-wig thinks about it about for a second, and then explains that that's OK, because the company is going to make it up with volume. Well, the joke's on us: that's how the GOP approachs our nation's finances.
Reagononomists, Neoconomists, and now McConomists keep trying to sell that same old trickle-down voodoo, promising the dramatic results are just around the corner. Sure, the deficit has exploded, middle class wages are stagnant or down for three decades, the super rich are getting richer still, and once again the economy is in the tank while fuel prices are through the roof. But really, we're assured over and over, it will work this time.
Why it's so simple! Giving giving gazillionaires more gazillions will create a growing economic tide lifting all boats, trickle down to grateful wage earners, and generate gads of tax revenue to shrink the massive deficit conservatives created by giving gazillionaires more loot.
The only problem -- well there's clearly a lot of problems not the least of which is the awfully suspicious coincidence that the GOP's reverse Robinhood scam happens to grotesquely benefit the same people telling us hardworking saps what a swell idea it is -- it doesn't work:
The Bush administration on Monday plans to project the U.S. budget deficit will soar to a new record of nearly half a trillion dollars in fiscal 2009 as the economic outlook darkens and Americans elect a new president.
So far McCain's economic policy is to keep doing the same thing Bush did; racking up huge debt by giving mega-rich people more money, only bigger and better, while confidently expecting different results than the serial failures so far produced by hare-brained conservative ideology. Greed would explain it nicely, maybe with a pinch of classic insanity. But given the quality of McCain’s economic advisors, his self-professed inability to grasp even the bare basics of modern macroeconomics, and the flawless track record of conservatism losing big money on every policy and initiative, maybe they really do hope to make it up with volume.