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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWounded Bear
(58,618 posts)If you look at what the Republicans have been fighting to destroy, it is all of the "socialist" legislation enacted by Democrats over the last 100 years that have actually been working just fine, if we properly fund and support them.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)iemitsu
(3,888 posts)legislation since it was passed. They have used every imaginable method to either convince us that it was in our interests to give up on the safety net or to simply take those benefits away, from the 1932 attempted military coup of the government to the Bush/Cheney plan to destroy the safety net through bankruptcy.
The assaults are relentless and they come from every direction. It better not be a democratic President who finally bargains away our security.
But those of us, old enough to remember the days before Reaganomics, know that things worked better when the rich paid taxes (besides actually being able to pay most of our bills).
In fact there were many of us who knew, from the start, that trickle-down economics would not work out well for the bulk of us.
While we had to tighten our belts we were subjected to a constant barrage of anti-poor people propaganda until many believed that they were the cause of all our hardships.
We forgot that most of us could end up among the poor, very easily, and our sympathy then leaned toward the rich (who we all hoped to become one day).
I think that fantasy has about run its course. People are finally waking to the reality of the republican, utopian ideal, and they recognize that they are not included in that vision.
While the rich view FDR as a traitor to his class yet many economists see him as the savior of capitalism, someone who moderated the most extreme abuses of the system so it would not collapse in on itself. That moderation is no longer regulated and the rich are blindly driving us in the same direction we were headed in the late 1920s.
MANative
(4,112 posts)Blue4Texas
(437 posts)Has never worked
Auntie Bush
(17,528 posts)Boooooooo!
I thought we learned that lesson after Clinton raised taxes and the economy boomed.
How many times does this have to happen before they stop believing in their own bologna?
adieu
(1,009 posts)when one is capable of believing in a god that rapes a virgin to impregnate her with his son, who is actually him, then after this son grows up, kills him, but lets him resurrect (kind of a cheat, you might say), so that his death - a false death - will bring salvation (how?) to all the people on the earth. But, the one person who had to enable all this gloriousness to happen, Judas Iscariot, is killed and has his entrails scattered all over the place.
Yeah, if any of that makes sense to anyone and they can accept that, then obviously, they can accept other cuckoo ideas like trickle-down economics and war is peace and bootstrappiness.
If they had believed in a god that had a bit more logical underpinnings, I think such dreck like trickle-down economics would never have gone through.
Or, if they read more about the life of Christ, and not so much about his death and resurrection, they would have read how he treated the poor and the sick and didn't trickle-down on them.
and I need a "like" button for your post!
generally communicates one's support for a post, where (n) equals a natural number. Generally, the greater the number the greater the enthusiasm communicated.
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)Good luck with that!
Trickle down eco is code for "give me all your money"....without the gun. Period. No supernatural underpinnings are required.
xtraxritical
(3,576 posts)<snip>
The economy grew in 19 of the 20 years in which Democratic Presidents submitted a budget and in 16 of the 20 years in which Republican Presidents submitted a budget.
For the twenty years for which Republican presidents submitted budgets, the average rate of GDP growth was 2.94%.
For the twenty years in which Democratic presidents submitted budgets, the average rate of GDP growth was 3.92%.
<snip>
See the whole article and more.
markbark
(1,558 posts)"a god that had a bit more logical underpinnings"
Isn't that rather an oxymoron?
It's religion. By very definition it has NOTHING to do with logic.
whathehell
(29,050 posts)Beyond the fact that many Obama supporters are devotees of the Christian "ideology",
and that a goodly number of Repukes are NOT, the "Christianity" made me do it" is quite a stretch
wouldn't you say?
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)So you can be rational and believe in Jesus' teachings. Or you can be irrational, believe in magic and that makes it possible for you to believe in the story of the virgin birth and the resurrection. Or you can view those stories as symbolic, as symbolizing a spiritual reality in life. If you take the Bible stories literally, you can believe any crazy story, and you probably will.
Does not mean the Bible isn't "true." It is true on a symbolic level.
whathehell
(29,050 posts)and I think he/she is the proper recipient of your post, not me.
and, didn't the one place in this fairytale where the jesus man expressed true outrage, take place when confronting the "money changers" in the temple?
all these big money people who push trickle down are nothing more than "money changers". the ones (whose actions) jesus hated. (don't want to imply the jesus man hated anyone. not god-like, you know?... at least he wasn't prone to being jealous and vengeful, like daddy...)
the so-called christian followers who support them in this piss party need to be aware of that.
like many who will say when called out, "i'm sorry if anyone took offense by what i said...."
SubgeniusHasSlack
(276 posts)republickconism is irrelevant.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)Not to 3rd-wayers.
SubgeniusHasSlack
(276 posts)and are similarly irrelevant.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)but they won't admit it. The Republican-enablers and Republican-wannabes certainly won't admit that while falsely claiming that they are more practical than the FDR-Democrats whom they call "purists".
I wish that they were irrelevant. But they have infiltrated the Democratic Party and, imo, it's too soon to say that they are irrelevant.
They, for example, won't be irrelevant when they support and demand that we support cuts to SS, extension of the Bush tax-cuts for the super rich, and approval of the pending let's-send-even-more-jobs-to-foreign-countries "free-trade" agreement.
Populist_Prole
(5,364 posts)The knife edge of the slippery slope.
Dubster
(427 posts)judesedit
(4,437 posts)AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)Besides.... all the richie riches were rich then, and will be afterwords.
Aerows
(39,961 posts)They are afraid that their Republican orthodoxy is going to go down the drain. Now I'm going to savor the delicious piece of carrot cake my neighbor brought over that her kids got her for her birthday, just as much as I savor the thought that Republican orthodoxy is exposed as a failure.
glinda
(14,807 posts)underpants
(182,717 posts)I say IF just to be nice.
Romney loved to talk about how he would create 12 million new jobs - well most economists think that is going to happen anyway as the normal course of business
Romney talked about becoming energy independent - well we already have a plan and we are on course to do that. Mitt's plan was actually NOT going to do that.
and so on
60% or so in most polls still blame Bush for everything (rightfully so) - they just can't scrub that many people's minds. Now they have installed "OBAMACARE" the name as an institution AND their voting numbers are diminishing by the day.
Change has come
(2,372 posts)Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)Raygun disliked the fact ordinary folks could have things that only the very rich could have. He was a very spiteful person. He and his handlers all came from the Country Club crowd. With the help of people like Lee Attwater,Roger Alies and others,the big destruction of upper mobility began. Hit the Unions(Patco). Load up the Consumer with debt.(S&L crisis) Wealth transfer(tax breaks for the top earners and raise the taxes on everyone else). By the time Clinton came along,the destruction had already past the tipping point and we have been in a survival mode ever since. Bottom line,you do not deserve what we have cause your not like us,famous words of Leona Helemsley pretty much tells you the whole story. BTW,only little people pay taxes,not us,cheap BITCH.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)He, like Margaret Thatcher, had alzheimer's. But we'll never know for how long.
His handlers knew, but we didn't.
If you want to blame someone for being spiteful, Nixon is one. Among other things, he's the one who started the process of shipping American manufacturing jobs (held by registered Democrats, primarily) to foreign countries.
ProudProgressiveNow
(6,129 posts)Jack Sprat
(2,500 posts)in the 90s under Clinton. The Bush years reinforced the fallacy, but people have short memories.
amywalk
(254 posts)dtom67
(634 posts)I don't understand all this euphoria over winning the election. We won bigger than this in 2008; look what happened just 2 years later. In 2012, we won to maintain the status quo , that's all.
" But, we beat Mittens and his billion dollar campaign ! "
Yeah. Wow.
We now have proof that it takes more than a billion dollars to get the most un-electable man on the planet into the presidency. Just by looking at Mitt Romney, 99% of the population knew that he was not on their side. Just by looking at Mitt, your standard of living went down. We really didn't need the 47% video to know that Mitt was the candidate of, by and for the wealthy. He didn't care about anyone else.
So what?
What if they run someone who is more charismatic? Same old policies, yet is more visually palatable to voters?
don't count these villains out yet...
2010 was very sobering to me.
There was NO reason to allow the republican's any level of power in Washington at all, and for no reason other than them throwing a big hissy fit and treating LONG, L O N G overdue health care reform how they should have treated the Patriot Act, the people of this country decided to not only usher in one of the biggest newcoming group of lunatic congressman we have seen ever in DC, they allowed them to get control of the levers of most state governments just in time for the redistricting that would effect the next decade.
I was around in the 90s when they were raging morons, too, and 2010 only served to ensure, IMO, that we will NEVER be free from the capacity of republican's to drive public discourse and get elected, no matter how horrible they have been or are.
hue
(4,949 posts)musette_sf
(10,200 posts)for that particular 30+ year reign of error to come to a well deserved close.
I saw RWR for exactly what he was in 1975 - an empty suit figurehead through which the MIC and corporatist cabal, via the bitter ex-Nixonians, would disembowel our nation's middle class and attempt to install a permanent Imperial Presidency.
I want MY country back.
pansypoo53219
(20,966 posts)Smickey
(3,316 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)progressoid
(49,961 posts)mzmolly
(50,984 posts)progressoid
(49,961 posts)it did!
When I saw the name Hanauer, I knew I had seen that name somewhere. Turns out I posted it before! It's hard to keep up with this stuff sometimes.
Uber-Wealthy Capitalist Gave a TED Talk -"Rich People Don't Create Jobs"- And TED Refuses to Post It
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002696744
And MindMover's post
The Ted talk that is tooo politically incorrect....
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101729161
a2liberal
(1,524 posts)Thanks! No wonder TED saw fit to censor it... those ideas are dangerous to the uber-wealthy.
TeeYiYi
(8,028 posts)TYY
butterfly77
(17,609 posts)this deserves its own thread.
mzmolly
(50,984 posts)Absolutely agree!
zbdent
(35,392 posts)but then, I thought, I'd get banned for life for posting what could be considered "pornography".
So I considered posting a picture of a woman's brain, instead ...
gulliver
(13,179 posts)I also got Eric Beinhocker's The Origin of Wealth which provides much of the inspiration for the Liu and Hanauer book. Very powerful stuff.
murielm99
(30,724 posts)any shade of brown. Not orange. Orange, like Boehner orange, is okay. (BTW, that is a newly named color. I wonder if it will show up in the extra large boxes of Crayolas).
I guess they are afraid of several things, then.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)bvar22
(39,909 posts)... where America produced the largest, wealthiest, and most Upwardly Mobile Working Class the World has ever seen occurred in the late 50s - late 60s.
The Tax Rate on the Wealthiest Americans was between 71% - 90%,
and the minimum Capital Gains Tax was 25%.
Corporations, Utilities, and Banks were regulated,
Mom & Pop (local businesses) were protected from unfair competition from the Big Boxes,
Too Big to Fail was Too Big to Exist,
and Unions were STRONG.
Lets try THAT again.
You will know them by their WORKS,
not by their rhetoric, promises, or excuses.
[font size=5 color=green]Solidarity99![/font][font size=2 color=green]
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Up2Late
(17,797 posts)ReRe
(10,597 posts)1000%
arthritisR_US
(7,286 posts)Rosa Luxemburg
(28,627 posts)if they tax them they won't be too happy
blackdiamond62
(24 posts)is not that Mr Obama will fail but that he and the Dems will be successful in their vision for this country.
Cha
(297,026 posts)Thanks for the Graphic, Will.
VIRAL IT
David Zephyr
(22,785 posts)Superb.
Promethean
(468 posts)Raksha
(7,167 posts)Whenever they say something "won't work," for me it's an instant heads-up that it WILL work, and therefore they don't want it to be tried. After the Great Depression and the New Deal, we KNOW what works to fix a broken economy and what doesn't. They would love to have us forget it, of course.
stupidicus
(2,570 posts)I've been making that argument for years.
dem4ward
(323 posts)SURPLUS!
TBF
(32,029 posts)Obamacare is going to be as hard to give up as Social Security and Medicare. Imagine that - treat people decently and they like it. There is no way to ethically rationalize why some in this country should be billionaires and others homeless. But greedy folks do not like to share ...
You nailed it.
nolabels
(13,133 posts)When they rich get taxed more they also have to work harder and employ more people to make that buck. The little guy is the beneficiary in many ways. And it's not the rich who will create those extra jobs and income. It's the people in middle benefiting from a more equal playing field. Another benefit with all that needing to make money, the liquidity of the cash being flashed about means if you get greedy and try and hold on to more you will loose the race and taxes get more as a percentage. For the reason, because if you would of been active you could of made more but didn't because people went around you. Even though the tax rates only will be getting a little more fair the big deal is loosening up the cash so it get passed around. It's not how much cash there is but more of how it gets passed around.
That's why they are called conservatives, but really they should be called hoarders and misers
merh
(35,996 posts)will actually work - that the dems will fix things that they broke.
Of course they are afraid that tax rate increases will work and that the rich won't be harmed by them as much as the economy is fixed.
Dark n Stormy Knight
(9,760 posts)nxylas
(6,440 posts)Trickle-Down economics is a zombie lie. No amount of empirical evidence will make it "go down the drain", since there is a well-funded network of media outlets and think-tanks dedicated to keeping it alive. When have you ever heard a member of the punditocracy say "Ok, I'll admit it, I've been wrong all these years and must hand in my resignation immediately"? Over anything?
KansDem
(28,498 posts)RBInMaine
(13,570 posts)NoMoreWarNow
(1,259 posts)was to distract the people from that fact. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was.
WhoIsNumberNone
(7,875 posts)wolfie001
(2,218 posts)The man was a fraud and he was the leading proponent of the decline of the Middle Class. It started in 1981 and his "championing" the off-shoring of American Industrial Might and Knowledge leads one to "facepalm"......
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)butterfly77
(17,609 posts)sarcasmo
(23,968 posts)gateley
(62,683 posts)liberalmuse
(18,672 posts)Good job!