General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: So What Is The Repubs Reasoning & Their Response For Not Putting Money Into The Infrastructure?.. [View all]0rganism
(25,704 posts)Remember, the end goal is "profit and power".
The republican plan starts by destroying the federal government's role as a service provider, or rather the largest government at any particular level (national? federal. state? state gov't. local? municipal/county board/whatever)
When the government, whether it be county, state or federal, cannot maintain or improve the infrastructure, it fails to meet demands of some kind. This causes discontent among the public.
This in turn opens the annoyed public to the GOP's favorite form of propaganda: "the government can't meet your needs because it is too large/inefficient/bloated/union-infested/unresponsive/whatever."
Once popular agreement is established on that point, the next asserted step is, "You pay too much in taxes. You need to withhold tax revenue from the government so it can no longer try to provide the services it failed to deliver to you. Then that service can be provided by the private sector/a church/concerned volunteers/whatever instead, and they will do a much better job for less. Meanwhile you will be personally richer for not having paid as much in taxes."
At this point, if the public buys into the propaganda, they will progressively defund the government at the targeted level, making it impossible for services to be provided effectively, and reinforcing the first propaganda point. The feedback loop is complete, and revenue starvation can pretty much drive itself from there on down.
What next? What do they gain from it?
Well the first benefit is the ability to discredit the opposition: "see? big government never works!"
The next benny is more interesting. Once they take over a government that's scrambling for cash, they can contract out with their buddies in industry/religion/charity groups/whatever to do the jobs that government used to do, but obviously on a reduced scale (selectively and conditionally providing services which used to be open to all). Also, once they have their influence embedded deep in the revenue stream, they'll pump what funding remains to the parts of government where they have the most natural alliances, obviously at the expense of those to which they have little affinity -- but you didn't really need those services anyway, right?
This enables a taxpayer-funded revenue stream to targeted private entities who will, in turn, generally support republicans in their future bids for power at any level, while redirecting money to the republicans' friends and family.