By Keith C Milne
The tension between charity and giving vs. not incentivizing laziness and lethargy continues to churn as conservatives, especially the far right, and progressives, especially the far left, see each other through opaque lenses of (mostly) misunderstanding.
Progressives engage in many charitable acts and humanitarian efforts, and their efforts to nationalize such humanitarian efforts are most often criticized harshly by the GOP as nothing more than a giveaway by “Socialists” or even “Communists” of (THEIR) hard earned money.
Conversely, at least in a narrow, convoluted way, those in the GOP seem to want to continue to justify their tax breaks to the wealthy by arguing in favor of “trickle-down economic theory,” even though it has long ago been debunked by expert economists. The rhetoric the GOP often utilize makes it obvious that they see themselves, i.e., the members of the party, those of similar look, lifestyle, and economic standing as the only ones who contribute in a meaningful or significant way in this country and, therefore, should be left alone, unburdened by taxes or regulations so they will be motivated to continue driving America to new heights of greatness. They assume much with this, like they are the group that made America great, not anyone else, especially anyone of color or, God forbid, a gay contributor to society!
That argument, and the practice of trickle down economics, particularly during the 1980’s, used by the GOP over the last 50 years, have only resulted in the greatest concentration of wealth on the entire planet and in the history of mankind! This elite group is tiny, wield too much power over the quality of life for many of us, independent of whether we know this or not, agree with it or not.
This argument, which at a glance seems to make sense–work hard, create value, get wealthy, and if you fall down and end up broke or broken, you only have yourself to blame–is easy to buy into when you’re mad. But it is far too black and white to exist in reality as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. There is no gray area in the argument, and in real life there is always a gray area. For example: let’s not forget about all the senior citizens receiving aid that cannot work, or those with mental illness, disabilities, or other functionally impairing conditions that many live with, and the so called “freebie money” they get are the only thing keeping them alive and living at a minimal level. Oops! Forgot about them didn’t you? I know, it’s yet another American cultural malformation: disrespect for elders, indigents, and those with mental infirmities.
Yes, there are some people who are receiving assistance who have learned how to qualify for benefits that really should be working and are able to, but aren’t. Some people get over for awhile no matter what is in place, but they are a minority. However, far more people ARE working and really shouldn’t be! Many are well past “normal” retirement age, and many work in pain, because oddly enough, while living in the richest industrialized country in the world, one that bought into “trickle down economics during 8 years of Reagan, followed by 4 more of President George Herbert Walker Bush, ensured that life was going to be harsh and horrible for hundreds of thousands of people nationwide for a long time to come.
The GOP engaged in this trickle down bullshit theory actively for twelve straight years, allowing increasing concentration of wealth at the top, while also simultaneously allowing companies to act in a laissez-faire manner, many of whom did so demonstratively, taking their companies overseas or south of the border to further maximize their profit, while simultaneously tucking money away for decades in various Swiss and other offshore banking accounts. And now, after giving the wealthy another huge tax cut under President Trump, they are still wanting to chop and slash and burn up promises and programs like the Great Society Program of the 1960’s.
As stated in this fact sheet from Whitehouse.gov this last Spring:
Republican Middle-Class Tax Increase and Threat to Social Security and Medicare
After delivering almost $2 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and largest corporations with their 2017 tax law, Congressional Republicans, led by Senator Rick Scott, are following up by proposing $100 billion per year in tax increases on middle-class families. According to independent analysis, around 75 million American families—96 percent of them making less than $100,000—would pay an average of $1,480 more in taxes each year. The Republican plan doesn’t raise a single penny in taxes from the wealthiest Americans or profitable corporations.
These tax increases would mean:
- 24 million families of seniors making less than $100,000 per year would face tax increases.
- Another 24 million families with kids making less than $100,000 per year would face tax increases.
In 2017 the Republicans delivered an average tax cut of over $250,000 a year to families in the top .1%; now they want working families to pay $100 billion more in taxes each year. Republicans complain that middle-class Americans don’t have “skin in the game” and don’t pay enough in taxes. But the truth is that middle-class Americans are the back bone of our economy, pay plenty in federal, state, and local taxes, and in many cases pay a higher rate than the super-wealthy.
It’s not just that – the Republican plan calls for expiring all laws, including Social Security and Medicare, after 5 years. That means Social Security and Medicare would be eliminated, unless Congress could enact them again. That’s wrong. The President (Biden) believes these programs are sacred commitments. They should be strengthened – not threatened.
Why would you vote for anyone who supports these tactics, unless you’re also someone who stands to benefit from doing so? This contrarian voting against oneself is borne out of pure ignorance. One form of that is simply voting based on party rather than the candidate. However, pure ignorance these days is truly astonishing considering how easy it is to ask the Google machine anything you want to know about, and then getting a whole bunch of information back about it in about 3 milliseconds.
The really tragic part is that the GOP tries extra hard to convince so many working class and minority people via the Fox News propaganda machine that any vote other than a vote for the GOP candidate, is a vote for having their ‘freedoms’ taken away or severely limited. In other words they incite fear in their potential voters, and by doing so often manage to convince enough people to buy into their slanted messaging just long enough to get their vote.
Unfortunately, by doing so, they have just cast a vote against themselves and their coworkers and neighbors! The GOP has a history of paying for tax breaks for the rich and corporations by increasing taxes on the middle class and doing away with as many benefits as possible for the poor. I remember reading in college that the GOP has historically appealed to two groups: the very wealthy and those who aspire to be, and the poor/ignorant/working class people. The wealthy for the tax breaks, and the poor are somehow always convinced that by voting GOP, their gun rights will remain intact, and that the money at the top really will trickle down to them . . . eventually . . . even though it never has!
It’s all about money with the GOP. It always has been, and right now it is worse than ever, and watch out senior citizens, should they retake power! The members of the GOP all act like federal tax money is their own personal money, and that paying for anything that might help others equates to giving THEIR MONEY AWAY TO STRANGERS FOR NO GOOD REASON! What a joke! Where’s the humanity in this behavior, or voting record, or in holding this type of attitude? It is non-existent!
What the GOP never seems to get is that by lifting people up through careful and targeted spending, like paid skilled job training rather than giving people unemployment checks while they are forced to go out and look for work when there are no jobs to be had, society as a whole improves. That slow, steady, economic uplifting is what ends up becoming a way to fund the sustainability. In fact, this wise spending will accomplish exactly what trickle down theory promises but fails to deliver, but rather than depending on spoiled, selfish, rich people to do the right thing and fund programs that would benefit others, this gets that job done from the bottom up and the stimulus increases employment, resulting in increased payroll taxes collected on money earned by the formerly unemployed workers who are now spending that money and becoming the way to sustain long-term economic health by lowering the overall societal cost to sustain these programs over the long-term.
The beauty of this type of beneficial “social spending,” is that it accomplishes many goals simultaneously all without inflicting pain on the millions who need assistance (yesterday), and all without having to subject those same millions to have to sit by, while in dire need, and wait, and watch you idiot politicians argue endlessly over nickels and dimes as if they are coming out of your childhood piggy banks! All of you old, out of touch, out of shape, and in some instances, senile senators that serve the wealthy and yourselves before even having a fleeting thought about those who voted to put you where you have been feeding at the trough most of your adult lives, some of you for forty years.
Some of Government of the people, by the people, for the people! Last time I would’ve been able to say that sentence and actually still be telling the truth was during the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidency and the Great Society programs he managed to implement, which I will mention in fairness were later also embraced and even expanded by both former republican presidents Nixon and Ford. Ah, the good ‘ole days when even arch enemies would cooperate to get great things done together once in awhile.
During the period 1964 to 1977 much was accomplished towards racial and gender equality, medicare, medicaid, infrastructure improvements, transportation improvements, and social programs like food stamps to help keep people afloat and prevent them from falling through the cracks. Unfortunately, all of these programs have been continually chipped away at by the GOP since that time period, the intensity of which continues to increase each year.
Additionally, the Trump years had a profound negative impact on normalizing crass, inappropriate, unfiltered rhetoric and behavior, and it’s amazing to me now just how transparent some folks have become about wanting to do away with programs that benefit less able poor people. They don’t even apologize anymore for their outspoken or obvious greed and lack of any type of care and concern for others, as well as being very revealing about their own personal (lack of a) moral code.
Further, it seems that now, lacking any real policy agendas whatsoever, they have resorted to continually threatening to investigate every aspect of the Biden administration once in office. Similar to what I imagine half-starved winter wolves, the GOP stare into the cameras, salivating as they promise to totally re-investigate the Hunter Biden laptop debacle again and other investigative adventures that promise to be a lot of much to do about nothing, because that’s what their party is now, much to do about nothing. After all, they need to have something to shout about, in order to convince their voters that they have “a plan” going forward, when in fact there is no plan other than to burn down all the good that Biden and Obama created while they each were president. All the GOP ever seems to want to prove is that the democrats really are the slimy communists they continue trying to convince us that they are, and that all that is wrong with the the United States, no, the whole world is somehow the democrats fault.
What they don’t seem to understand at all is that we cannot have a booming economy, low taxes, low unemployment, proper immigration levels, climate friendly manufacturing and living practices, low-to no crime, and zero drug problems or shootings just for white people!
You cannot benefit a smaller and smaller group at the hands of the whole and expect things to stay nice! And you certainly cannot expect “the masses” to ever pay for this perfect existence for this tiny group, especially while some seniors are having to choose between food or medicine, minorities continue to struggle to find decent work, while drug addiction and neighborhood shootings are increasingly a way of life for more Americans every year.
It’s all about money. Always has been, likely always will be. There is plenty, it’s just imbalanced in how it’s distributed and currently held right now. These issues will continue to exist as long as we continue to tolerate the status quo, or as long as the super wealthy, for the most part, continue to struggle with learning to let go and realize that they will never, ever, spend the kind of cash pile they have, and use that latent power to do good in the world! Why squander that gift!?
Is it right that one person should be able to chunk out 44 billion dollars for Twitter and then turn around like a total authoritarian ass-wipe and lay off 3700 people post COVID-19 just because he can afford to become the owner? Is this moral? Is this the type of society we truly wish to live in and leave for our children and grandchildren?
For that matter, and setting aside all of the awe and the seeing of stars around vast monetary wealth, where is the morality in keeping so much money for yourself that you can plunk down that kind of gold on the table and still be the richest man in the world?
I know I personally would NEVER allow myself to hang onto that kind of wealth in the first place. I would be very grateful that whatever goods and/or services that I provided offered so much value to people that they bought my stuff like crazy and made me a super billionaire, but I would HAVE TO funnel 99% of it right back into the world into things that improved the most amount of lives in the shortest time possible for starters. Now THAT would be doing something good! What fun I would have doing that!
I am no longer fooled by any argument that is essentially saying to me, “Vote for me. In turn, I will vote for tax cuts for the wealthy. They in turn will then build more factories. That in turn will create more jobs. More jobs means more spending and a better economy.” Trouble is, you vote for them, they vote for tax cuts for the rich, who DO NOT build more factories in America, they build them overseas or not at all! Or, like Elon Musk, they buy the factory and fire you for no good reason!
The bottom line is, this is what I have witnessed in my lifetime of over six decades “Trickle Down Economic Theory” translates to a constant trickle of your hard earned money out of your working class pocket into the giant money sucking pocket of one of those people who reside in the top 1% of the world’s economic money club, and likely paid less taxes than you did last year. Use the google machine to fact check me! Go ahead. You should do it more anyway. Facts need to be known.
What you believe with conviction for whatever reason defines your reality. I hope you at least fact check what you think you believe, as well as what you for sure believe to be true, so that what you pursue, how you choose to live, what actions you take or choose to not take are steeped in facts and truth, and that you can be a living example of what fruit can develop living in that realm, instead of always reacting from a standpoint of defending a party or lies or unproven theories or flat out misinformation.
You can never go wrong with the truth! The truth is derived from or distilled from FACTS. Trickle down economic theory didn’t pan out in real life and did much damage by deepening the economic chasm between those at the top and the rest of us. It stratified us economically like never before, and, while it proved to be an effective tool used by the GOP over and over during election cycles, it has proven to be nothing more than economic folklore and is a total myth in reality.
Please do not ever be swayed by anyone using this argument as a reason to vote for them and professing this theory to be the truth, and that by voting for them, you are voting in favor of this policy and in doing so will see good times ahead if you simply wait long enough. (Translation: keep us in power to realize this benefit). It’s never panned out despite having plenty of time to see this promise actually happen.
As reported by economicshelp.org recently:
Many economists are sceptical of the belief in ‘the trickle-down’ effect. One reason, the wealthy have a higher marginal propensity to save, and also in recent years, wealth has been saved in off-shore accounts to avoid paying tax. Therefore, when the wealthy gain extra income, only a small percentage may filter through to low-income workers.
Also, some studies suggest that increased income inequality can lead to this inequality being solidified through educational opportunities, wealth accumulation and the growth of monopoly/monopsony power. Furthermore, increased inequality may lead to lower rates of economic growth.
Tax cuts have no clear impact on growth. In The Economic Consequences of Major Tax Cuts for the Rich (2020), by David Hope and Julian Limberg, the authors found tax cuts for the rich, had no statistical effect on economic growth. They looked particularly at the 1980s in UK and US, where significant taxes were cut.
“The results also show that economic performance, as measured by real GDP per capita and the unemployment rate, is not significantly affected by major tax cuts for the rich. The estimated effects for these variables are statistically indistinguishable from zero.” (LSE)
A report by the IMF (2015) found increasing income share of the poor increased economic growth, but increasing income share of the rich, led to lower growth.
“We find that increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20 percent results in lower growth.”
Hmmmm . . . interesting (facts).
It’s a statistical reality that those countries that spend more on their citizens benefit from greater productivity because the people are better balanced, happier from living a life more in step with their humanity. Many of the ordinary stressors that reduce life-span are addressed through higher taxation that in turn pays off by increasing productivity, life-span, and overall work/life/family integration and synchronicity. You get what you pay for.
If you live where it’s everyone for themselves, then everyone operates in survival mode trying to ensure that they, and their families get their share, and unfortunately, when opportunities arise that give them access to way more than they could ever want, need, or use in a lifetime, they most often will take as much as possible anyway!
I will always vote for policies that favor a socialist safety net and humanistic employment policies within a society that simultaneously operates within a capitalistic economy, but with greater taxation and oversight to ensure fairness and that all who live in our world are taken care of at a basic level and have at least a basic sustenance level afforded them as human beings who deserve some dignity.
Here is an interesting deeper dive into the trickle down myth if you care to hear it all explained to you.
