The GOP narrative that we can't raise taxes on the "job creators" is a complete farce. Hiring practices won't change because a business owner or investor/capitalist sees his top tax rate return to the 39.6% level that existed under Bill Clinton, compared to today's 35%. Yet they are getting away with this narrative, almost unchallenged...
I say "almost" because there is an occasional mention of the dishonesty of the GOP meme, even in the corporate media. See the article in Bloomberg Businessweek on the debt crisis. Even in this right-leaning article, the author admits to the incorrectness of the GOP claim...
If America’s long-term budget problems were small, they could be fixed entirely by the Republicans’ preferred method, which is spending cuts, or entirely by the Democrats’ favored fix, tax increases. The challenge is not small, however. That’s why nearly every bipartisan group that’s looked at the problem—including the Bowles-Simpson and Domenici-Rivlin commissions—has concluded that some mix of the two will be required. The precise mixture is a political matter, but one would have to place an exceptionally high priority on the well-being of upper-income taxpayers to conclude that none of the adjustment burden should fall on them.
Republicans in Congress, not wanting to appear to defend the rich, have attempted to block any deal that includes higher taxes on the grounds that tax hikes are “job-killing.” But experience shows that in a period of slack demand like the present, tax hikes are no more job-killing than spending cuts, and probably less so. Cutting spending—say, by firing federal employees or canceling procurement—removes demand from the economy dollar-for-dollar. A dollar tax hike, on the other hand, especially one aimed at upper incomes, cuts demand by less than a dollar. Those who pay the tax cover part of it from their savings and only part by reducing their spending. If lawmakers insist on using the phrase “job-killing,” Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution-Urban Institute Tax Policy Center, wrote in a recent blog post, “they should apply it equally to both tax increases and spending cuts.”
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(Note to Williams: THIS is a false equivalency. The phrase "job-killing" should apply MUCH MORE to spending cuts than to tax increases, not "equally".)
Even Businessweek knows this is a con. Yet, the Republicans want to have the public also believe that cutting spending WON'T kill jobs. They want it both ways. I've got news for them....cutting spending is a much bigger job killer than raising taxes on the wealthy. Those cuts will result in workers losing their jobs, and not just government workers. All sorts of workers. They will then require more public assistance as they can't find new jobs in this economy, putting a strain on our budget to pay for unemployment insurance, food stamps, Medicaid and the like. Our unemployment rate will go yet higher, putting more pressure on our federal revenues and deficits, resulting in more calls for austerity, etc. This is a virtuous circle to the bottom of economic prosperity. A race to the ruination of our nation's standard of living.
Of course, I am in favor of cutting spending in certain sectors, while raising spending in other sectors. Our defense budget needs to be slashed in half over time. The savings can go into infrastructure, education, and healthcare, among other worthwhile programs for the common good. Our empire, though, has to be cut down to size. Yet, in what is now being proposed this weekend, defense cuts are essentially off the table. Entitlements, though, will be scheduled for future cuts. Bank on it.
ALL for the sake of more tax breaks for the top 2%, and more money for the Wall Street banks. It's sickening. Disgusting. Immoral. And unfair.
Yet Obama and most Democrats in Congress won't stand up for us. As our economy hits another sinkhole after the next round of spending cuts, with no tax increases, it will become evident we will need a national uprising. An unemployment rate in the double-digits will cause that.
An economy, and a nation, cannot thrive when its jobs and the buying power of the people are compromised. Nobody is telling that story in DC (Bernie Sanders excepted), and the media is all but silent. Our crisis is a "demand crisis", which is feeding into the deficit/debt problem. We are also undertaxed and Grover Norquist cult-followers are also successful at starving the beast. We have a revenue problem, not a spending problem, as I wrote in my last diary.
We need to keep pointing out to our friends, or anyone that will listen to us, that spending cuts are JOB KILLERS, and that tax cuts just ensure the ever widening wealth gap in the good 'ol USA. The so-called "job creators" have been and continue to be the job destroyers by supporting this UNFAIR policy of more tax breaks for them and less spending for everyone else, all while shipping jobs overseas.
If this cycle doesn't stop, some sort of political rebellion will be at hand.