I hear the debate. People complain about fairness. X gets something Y does not. IT IS UNFAIR!!!
Well, what about charity? What about medicaid? What about progressive tax rates? What about disability? What about tax exemptions for the rich that 99% of us will never have? What about the ACA? What about the big tax cut under the previous administration that meant a few dollars to most of us and 10,000s if not way more to the 1%? How was that any different?
In a consumer society if people have the ability to consume more then that creates demand and demand creates jobs. In fact that is one of the issues right now as people rethink what they want to do for a living?
Unemployment is up mainly because those locked out of the work force now are needed. So there is demand for work and the price of labor has gone up. That means people doing those jobs have more $ and can buy more stuff. The balance then is what is growth versus what is inflation.
If those people have more money and less deductions, well, that increases tax revenue and then you can either pay for government services we already demand which we want for free, thus lowering the deficit, or we can actually pay down the national debt.
The American dream was sold as get a good education and then get a good job then the student loans get paid off. Many never got the promise of work that a college degree offered.
The schools liked it and had lax grading systems because if someone fails out they don't get theirs. I know because I have friends who teach and are under pressure to socially promote (as they say in high school) to keep people coming back.
Then there the lenders who had written into law that even if someone went bankrupt say to a medical condition, the student loans are still there. So the lenders loved a guaranteed revenue stream.
What about the bailouts from 2008 under the Bush administration? (started there)
But...those bailouts...actually paid for themselves. So if we consider the impact on society and tax revenue then it was a good investment.
Did they get something you didn't get. Yes.
Then there is the argument of buying votes. So with the tax cuts or promise thereof we are told government bad by the people doing everything and anything to get into government. So if its so bad why go in?
Democrats are said to buy votes from the poor.
Republicans give tax breaks and buy the support of the haves, which then means donations back, which then means they can put out a message for people to vote against their own interests and make the other guys the devil.
Pelosi and McConnell share a lunch of the unborn. Or commit social taboos. What is the lie of the day? What is the name calling of the day? There is a message paid for by the contributors. That’s a freebie.
Now that the abortion social wedge issue has been resolved, what will the next social wedge issue be to get support on one thing and then do whatever while in charge? How will they raise money? Or how will they dupe the public for power?
A good example is the wind up of the acreditized debt insured financial instruments (packaging of loans - again guaranteed by you and me (not that we got a choice/voice)) which paid extremely high interests as junk bonds created a lot of fake wealth which then caused people to vote conservative to keep things as they are, and nothing was done about it until the financial collapse and as I heard one GOP senator say 'we were fired with malice by the American Public and this is a good election to lose'.
When I say do anything to stay in power I mean shut down the government and make the deficit and debt a big issue and hold us hostage with sequestration. Well, how many sequestrations did we have under the previous GOP administrations? Big deficits then eh?
Maybe we were held hostage just to gain support at any cost. Think Nixon keeping the Vietnam war going causing the death of 1000s for his ambitions.
They got the money to make those messages for free. OOOps — something you didn’t get.
There is a great deal to unpack there.
And what about charities — those big bosses getting paid big money to run them when that money should go to the cause.
We think they should live like church mice. They could go into industry right? Instead, let's look at the cost to run the charity and how much good it does. Next time someone lays into a charity check a watch dog site. Then again we could look at President Trump’s charity which was the kind that gets shut down and him fined $2,000,000 dollars. Did that affect his followers? Nah. $25,000,000 for fines on his University (no doubt profiting from the guaranteed loan scheme sticking us with the bill) well there you go. Student loans. Something for nothing.
Then there is foreign aid to get soft power. We are starting to lose that race with china. What does that mean? I don't know.
The Ukrainians are getting a lot of weapons and aid to fight the Russians. People woof about that freebie. Well.... I always tell people Neville Chamberlin when the topic comes up. Do we want to support a democracy more than willing to spill its own blood unlike a 20 year worthless war in the middle east trying to change people who many did not want change or were not willing to fight for it? There is another freebie.
Now the world feels the cost of war instead of the cost of the middle east wars kicked down the street and not even put on the books. So the defense industries got a lot of freebies. Those disabled soldiers? No one put a gun to their head and said join up (unlike Russia). We got a free war that did not affect the average citizen for 20 years and who did that benefit? Who got the freebie? And the counter to that is the updating of our military, jobs in defense, and their suppliers...testing our weapons in proxy wars…. ?? Well?
Measure all that out and then think do we want to hold fellow Americans down. It is a complex issue. I am still trying to put it all together. But there is a big hunk of it.
Everyone has a boo hoo argument until the big picture is on display. Then… two choices
Double down. You guys are bad. Boo hoo. You got something we didn’t and you are different from us.
Or if you have half a brain, how about think about these issues and what they really mean to us, our citizens, our country, and our success.
End Sermon Rabbi Arnstein