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GOP Speaks Up For Poor, Defenseless Millionaires
For once leading congressional Republicans have it right. Taking to the unquestioning Sunday morning talk shows, they decried the proposed minimum tax rate for millionaires rolled out today by President Obama as “class warfare” and an insidious way to portray the GOP as being indifferent to the many hardships being faced by ordinary Americans. Which, of course, is exactly what they are.
The outpouring of bombast was not unexpected, but for the Republicans to portray themselves so accurately is, perhaps, a chess move gone awry in the party’s ongoing effort to avoid joining their Democratic colleagues and the president in actually helping govern the U.S. out of unrelentingly dire economic times.
The award winner among the talking heads for sheer hubris was Representative Paul Ryan, the author of a dead-on-arrival deficit reduction plan that would have rewarded those poor, defenseless millionaires while impacting on the middle class, elderly, poor and infirm in a way that recalls Sherman’s march through Georgia. Oh, and would remove virtually all regulatory controls on Wall Street.
Ryan, shriller than usual, told his friendly host at Fox News Sunday that the millionaire tax rate “adds further instability to our system, more uncertainty and it punishes job creation,” which if nothing else certainly gives meaning to the term pretzel logic since the notion that the moolah the wealthy generate “trickles down” to we mere mortals has been widely discredited.
Astounding. Absolutely astounding.
Obama beat the income inequity drum loudly during his 2008 campaign but has allowed himself to be shouted down by the disloyal opposition and some Democrats as well when he has broached the idea of increasing taxes on the rich.
But this time it’s going to be different.
23 Responses to “GOP Speaks Up For Poor, Defenseless Millionaires”
I don’t understand this belief. What do you imagine the wealthy do with their money? If they spend it, they’re supporting all sorts of jobs at restaurants and airlines and yacht construction yards. If they invest it, they’re encouraging companies to hire people with it and produce a return. If they put it in a savings account (which will give them only a measly return), it gets loaned out to other people. If they loan it to the government (by buying tax exempt bonds, for example), it funds the public spending spree you like. Where can they put it where it *won’t* trickle down?
If your point is that the money trickles right back up–that the rich’s spending doesn’t elevate the poor from poverty in the long term–that may be so. But it seems equally so for government spending.
Dr. J,
That is how the wealthy spend some of their money. Some of it goes into speculative investments that bid up the price of commodities in ways that actually damage and destabilize our economy. An increasing chunk of that money goes into foreign investment, which only takes money out of the US economy. Even investments in US corporations aren’t necessarily going to result in US jobs. More and more of those investment dollars are NOT being spent here.
Shaun I think that incredible suggestions like Ryan’s can be made nowadays, because people younger than you, and I have never known the gentlemanly honor of politicians pre-Tip O’Neil. Or a time when television wasn’t preoccupied with politics as it’s preferred source of income. I cannot believe the gall of this Republican party of today. I never thought that they could possibly be this brazenly heartless. They simply want no protections for the vulnerable and no restrictions on the greedy.
The Republican America is NOT the America I love or could love. It stinks.
Dr. J:
Yes, the economy is sure to get back on its feet and the unemployed back to work because of those poor, defenseless millionaires.
My only question is why it hasn’t already happened. The answer is because there aren’t enough restaurant meals, airline flights and yacht builders to make that so.
Dr. J.
Let’s leave private jets and multi-million dollar yachts off the equation for now.
I am not a statistician or economist, but I bet Allen’s doughnut that middle class America creates ten-fold more jobs with what they spend at restaurants, coach airline tickets, purchases at Walmart, etc., than what trickles down in these areas from those poor, defenseless millionaires.
Updated Tax Polls
here:
http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/2368/updated-tax-polls
I too find it difficult to feel the pain of that upper 20 percent with 80 percent of the wealth of this country.
Additionally it is difficult to comprehend arguments that job growth will be “killed” when we’ve had near three decades to experiment with the trickle-down theory of wealth distribution. It behooves us to ask, why didn’t it happen in the decade of the Bush tax cuts?
I don’t know if it is class warfare or just math. But, IMHO, it too much of GLASS warfare. Perhaps if both sides would cut back on shooting their mouths off and in the process painting themselves into a smaller and smaller corner, and did more face to face talking and negotiating instead. There is too much media/internet exposure and both sides have to meet in the middle somewhere without the kabuki dance in public. Yes, Reps need to tell the TPers to back off and get real, but do it privately and Dems need to tell the more liberal faction that we need to do stuff that will be unpopular, if not for ourselves, than for our kids.
dduck:
What short memories we have. Obama tried over and over to talk face to face and to negotiate. You see what it got him and the country.
As I wrote the other day, the inmates have taken over the Republican asylum and the moderates have been locked in the superintendent’s office.
Your larger point is terribly important: We need to get stuff done for our kids, no matter how bitter the medicine might be.
The Americans who built this country were the hardworking, hard laboring common people, not pansies who got rich playing with money on Wall St. or sons and daughters who inherited their wealth. Republicans of course have no use for the common people who built and gave their lives for this country. All they seem to care about anymore is wealth and BS. Not sure which of those two they care about more. Probably BS by a whisker.
Duck-
You are trying to play peacemaker. It won’t happen. Republicans started this “no compromise” war and they intend to see it through. All I can say is that they must really believe in their goofy rhetoric no matter how many people are laughing in their face. So why is it that you cannot see that their stand is overtly ludicrous?
Just got back from the public library (Jacob Astor) passing by the Rockefeller University reading about The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Obviously these blood sucking capitalists threw a few coins to the poor folks and society. But, hey they can’t overcome the Nazi Reps who would grind up all people below a certain income level and feed them to the drones that keep harping for higher wages.
Thank goodness for the Dems, at least they say nice things while they reallocate money (picking Paul’s pocket to pay Peter). Hey, watching Three Card Monte always was always fascinating.
Ooooh, they wouldn’t talk to me, I’ll complain to the public and they won’t forget what nasty guys the Reps are. And, you media guys, love to “cover” these guys who can’t stand staying out of the public’s sight long enough to cut a deal.
The nod toward equal badness is always good for chuckle. You’re right though, the dems seem to become more useless with each passing year, they certainly aren’t the party of the common folk like they once were. That said, republicans don’t seem to give a crap about 90% of the populace, which is interesting give the degree to which they still are able to harness loyalty. In any event, the 2012 election should provide much entertainment, in a black comedic way of course. That black comedy is killing us though.
We should just call the GOP vs. Democrat nonsense what it really is:
Ass Warfare
Woof, woof on that Barky………
Good one Barky.
Duck-
I’m offended.
And furthermore there should be no need for charity within the richest nation on earth.
Libraries and medical research are charity.
OK, Allen, they also contributed to mental health, look into it.
Conservatives constantly say that both sides should “work together”. But then the politicians they support say that nothing is acceptable except to cut programs. Eliminating tax loopholes unless it is done in a revenue neutral fashion is unacceptable. Raising actual tax rates, no matter how little or much, is verboten. Those positions are non-negotiable. So where is that working together? Nowhere on the Republican side and still the “conservatives” support them and blame the Democrats for everything. BTW, while I admire Gates for his charity I can’t help but notice that virtually all of it goes overseas and while he was still managing it Microsoft started shipping jobs overseas and importing workers big time. Actually hiring Americans and doing some training if they didn’t quite already have the skills they needed was absolutely not possible. I remember them claiming that it was only the low level, not very challenging jobs that would be sent overseas. Not only did that change very quickly but those jobs are also what are known as beginning programming jobs. You know, the ones that give you the experience that the companies claim they want even as they eliminated the jobs that would give Americans that experience.
“And furthermore there should be no need for charity within the richest nation on earth.”
Because we replaced charity with way too much government, we won’t be for long.
Problem solved.
Yup, pretty sure I’m right, BS by a whisker – at least.
So what duck?
I’ll say it again: “And furthermore there should be no need for charity within the richest nation on earth”.
Including “Libraries” and “Especially medical research”…!
Yup, you’re on the correct track, keep up the the kind thoughts.
Thank You dduck!