The Beast Is Starved: Welcome to the Next Great Depression
by John Atcheson
Since Reagan, Republicans have been on a “starve the beast” campaign – by which they mean eviscerate the government by taking away as much revenue as they can.
Starving the beast has been the biggest bait and switch con game that has ever been perpetrated on the American people. And the most tragic.
“Well, if past is prologue, welcome to the next Great Depression.” (photo of mother and children As Paul Krugman pointed out, Republicans offered popular tax cuts so that they could later cut popular government programs “as a necessity.” Oh, we’d love to continue providing low cost, effective medical care under Medicare, but you see, the country just can’t afford it … Of course we can’t. Billionaire hedge fund managers and Wall Street traders pay less in taxes than their secretaries. And most corporations pay little or no taxes.
Starve the Beast was coupled with a clever campaign to make government appear to be a collection of bumbling bureaucrats who wasted tax money for pure pleasure. Long after it became politically impossible to stereotype racial and ethnic groups (with the possible exceptions of Muslims) it was – and is – quite acceptable to characterize government workers as shiftless, lazy and incompetent.
As a result, once the Republicans succeeded in cutting government revenue to the bone and beyond, it became impossible to raise taxes – who wants to give any more of their hard earned money to a bunch of lazy bureaucrats?
Never mind that most big government programs are far more efficient than their private sector equivalents. That’s a mere fact. Can’t let that get in the way of starving the beast.
Bait and switch. Divide and Conquer.
So, after starting with a surplus in 2000, Republicans used two wars, two rounds of tax cuts, and a giant giveaway to big Pharma, to get the country racking up debt like a drunken sailor.
Along comes the Bush recession, and the debt accelerates, and the Republicans declare the debt to be an “emergency” and right on schedule immediately attack popular programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Student loans –and virtually anything that doesn’t help the uber rich or the corporations suddenly must be cut if we are to stay solvent.
Never mind that cutting Social Security to balance the budget is like attacking the mailman because your car doesn’t work. It has nothing to do with the budget – but again, that’s a mere fact. When you’re drowning the beast, facts don’t matter.
So OK. The beast is drowned. Keynes is dead. Now what?
Well, if past is prologue, welcome to the next Great Depression.
See, the dirty little secret is that we never had a debt “crisis.” We had a jobs crisis.
While Republicans were arguing about the faux “crisis” and the press and Obama joined them, we got a series of disturbing economic signals. Consumer confidence was down, manufacturing was off, May and June’s job numbers were pathetic. In fact, if not for a hiring binge by McDonald’s there would have been a net job loss in May. That’s something to hang your hat on: McDonalds accounted for what little job growth there was. What’s next, America gets saved by an uptick in Wall Mart greeters?
Look. This whole drown the beast strategy has been nothing more than a stealth tactic for instituting an extremist version of a laissez faire, market uber-alles policy designed by and for the Plutocracy.
And to be sure, it’s worked great for them. Today, the richest 1% owns 40% of the nation’s wealth, and the top 10% owns nearly 75% of it.
The rest of us? Not so much.
Income and wealth inequality in the US has been increasing rapidly since Reagan, (with a slight break under Clinton). In terms of income inequality, the US now ranks about the same as Ivory Coast, Uganda and Cameroon – countries not exactly noted for being prosperous, equitable and just societies.
News flash for all the debt mongers, Tea Partiers and other assorted ignoramuses. You can’t run a consumer-based economy when the vast majority of consumers don’t have enough money to buy anything. After all, Paris Hilton can only buy so many yachts; Corporate CEOs can only purchase so many jetliners – even with their special jet tax credits; and Wall Street traders can only buy so many Bugattis. But middle and working class Americans need to spend their money on food, lodging, and other necessities.
Here’s the dirty little secret: Republicans want the economy to fail. They want Obama to fail, and they don’t care who gets hurt in the process. They want these things, because the beast is in the bathtub and they can almost taste its demise.
The pieces are in place for the Plutocrats final victory … an industry friendly Supreme Court; a Democratic Party that is either in collusion with the plutocrats, or so cowardly as to be neutered;
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Are You Ready For The Next “great Depression” And Do You Know Who Caused It?
Posted on September 17, 2011.
1) No
2) Bush and Reagan
Wow, so much energy wasted on negativity. Liberals are pathetic and that’s why they will lose the economy and the election in 2012.
All we can hope for at this point in time, is that the American voters wake up, and rid the congress of those that wish to see this become a reality.
progressive liberalism causes it
8 years of GW Bush Co has ruined America
Paul Krugman is scum and this is a rant and you are reported.
And Tony wonders why we need attackwatch.com
Gawker is now reporting that the Times is preparing a story arguing that President Obama is depressed. According to a Gawker article published September 12th, “Obama no longer finds joy in the political back-and-forth” and “has seemed increasingly listless to associates.” It goes without saying that an article on the state of Obama’s mental health is purely speculative since, without a report – or prescription- from the Presidential doctor, there’s no way of accurately discerning the President’s mental fitness. But murmurings on whether Obama requires Zoloft or Wellbutrin does add another layer of context to the debate about what it means to be the first black President and the expectations that title carries.
It is caused by hordes of excess labor from grossly overpopulating cultures undercutting wages. Depressions and wars were forced by overpopulating hordes, particularly the Irish during the 19th century, and by more Irish, Italian, and Polish excess population in particular during the early 20th century. Today overpopulating Asian cultures are sucking the world’s economy to the tiny wages accepted by their hordes of excess labor.
See my sources for why you distort the problem blaming the people who just exploit the situation while you pretend they cause it and ignore the real source of the problem.
Our nation has been overwhelmed by millions of immoral illegal aliens that need to be deported and our borders need to be secured otherwise we will have a depression.
Mexicans marry women and have more children with them than they can care for. Most keep their “boyfriends” too. They come and go across our porous southern borders spreading disease.
Mexicans are still angry at Americans for stealing their land, so they send their losers north to re-inhabit their lost territories. Washington retaliates by sending them our jobs. Now Obama wants to, literally, give away the farm. His immigration policies reflect just that.
Most Mexican immigrants are failures in their home countries, because they are lazy and look for the easy way. Their homelands are filled with factory jobs that had once been held by Americans on US soil. They enter the US illegally, because entering the US legally requires some effort and they want the easy way. They don’t value education and, consequently, neither do their children. Many look to crime instead of work that requires education and training. They’re looking for the easy way.
Now Obami wants to pave the easy way for these people by giving them a free ride.