They try to get the most revenue from Americans who have the least money.
And they continue to take less revenue from Americans who have the most money.
It’s like robbers hitting a soup kitchen instead of a bank, then wondering why their moneybag isn’t full.
“Republicans” are all eedjits.
Mr. Blunt and Cranky
Over and over again, we get these wake-up calls. Over and over again, America listens for a little while, and then goes back to its usual state of willful ignorance. Rinse and repeat. STUPID.
It’s not like we haven’t seen this before: people are oppressed for so long and in so many ways, they can’t take it any more and lash out in blind rage. Baltimore today, Ferguson yesterday, and running back through history: Watts, Little Rock, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, all the way back to ancient Rome and its predecessors. An insular ruling class oppresses the masses, and eventually the masses revolt.
And there are always those who TELL the ruling class what is going on, pleading with them, exhorting them to change the arc of history, to learn from history, to not repeat the mistakes of history. So it was, and so it is. For example, here are the words of Baltimore Orioles COO John Angelos:
That said, my greater source of personal concern, outrage, and sympathy beyond this particular case is focused neither upon one night’s property damage nor upon the acts, but is focused rather upon the past four-decade period during which an American political elite have shipped middle-class and working-class jobs away from Baltimore and cities and towns around the US to third-world dictatorships, like China and others; plunged tens of millions of good, hardworking Americans into economic devastation, and then followed that action around the nation by diminishing every American’s civil-rights protections in order to control an unfairly impoverished population living under an ever-declining standard of living and suffering at the butt end of an ever-more militarized and aggressive surveillance state.
Pretty clear, isn’t he? America can (and should) listen to him, wake up and take action. But no, America will probably just roll over, smack the s*** out of the snooze button on the alarm, and go back to sleep. Eventually, the wake-up call will be so loud, it can’t be ignored any longer.
By then, it’ll be too late. America will finally wake up, only to find out that it died in its sleep.
Mr. Blunt and Cranky
Regular readers know that Mr. Blunt and Cranky has had long careers in business and the arts, and is therefore not at all opposed to making money. Indeed, Adam Smith is frequently cited here: the man was a firm believer in a WELL-REGULATED free market. Because he was smart enough to see the harm that unchecked profits can cause.
Profits are not inherently bad: in the right measure, they can do a lot of good. But anything can be overdone: and the Teapublican “greed is good” mantra is an object lesson. Here, then, are three examples of the horrors that can be wrought by profits:
Number A: America’s profit-centered “health care” system kills lots of people. Including this writer’s only son. Yes, Aetna has death panels: people are denied care based on profit margins. That is why my son was kicked out of the hospital just a few hours after awakening from a coma. PROFITS CAN AND DO KILL. PROFITS KILLED MY KID.
Letter 2: American industry is constantly pushing for less (or no) regulation, in order to increase profit. Thence came disasters such as massive oil spills, poisoned rivers and aquifers, and destructive, deadly industrial accidents. Profits can and do destroy.
Thirdly: American politicos are taking bribes in record quantities to enhance the profitability of private businesses with taxpayer dollars. Yes, they call them “contributions”, but c’mon: these are bribes. Bribes that result in the theft of our hard-earned. Profits can and do corrupt.
Once again, Gentle Reader: your humble correspondent is not, repeat NOT opposed to profits. But not everything has a free-market solution. Some things are better divorced from a financial profit motive. Some things must be non-profit in order to succeed: things like health, education, public safety, and so on.
It’s long past time we put the final nail in the coffin of Reagan/Bush voodoo economics and its resulting death, destruction and corruption.
Reality is calling, America: better pick up the phone while we still can.
Mr. Blunt and Cranky
Finally, the root cause is revealed. Plenty of talk has been talked on the topic, by experts, data wonks, and politicians. But nobody was able to say why the 1% started f***ing the rest of us to an even greater extent than hitherto, from the 80’s through the present day. Not until a few months ago, that is:
There are many gauges of the depth and breadth of economic inequality, and they often measure what middle-income working people have today against what they had prior to 1980 – that time when homes were affordable, along with doctor visits and college educations. Yet few of the astonishing charts and metrics that have captured this widening gulf explain how it all came about. So when economist William Lazonick pointed a finger at a very specific aspect of corporate behavior, people took note.
Lazonick’s 4,900-word piece, titled Profits Without Prosperity, focused on the 449 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index that were publicly listed from 2003 to 2012. Lazonick found that from the end of World War II until the late 1970s, corporations generally took a “retain-and-reinvest” approach to profits. That is, they kept their earnings and reinvested them – first and foremost in pay raises and job benefits for the employees who helped make the firms more competitive, but also in business expansion, research and new technologies.
But starting in the early 1980s, after the Securities and Exchange Commission removed limits on companies’ power to buy back their stock, these large, publicly traded companies began spending a portion of their net income on stock buybacks. The trend was exacerbated in the 1990s, when the compensation packages of corporate chief executives were linked directly to the stock value, and has accelerated in recent years – even though it’s been little noticed and rarely discussed as a prime driver of economic inequality.
THIS IS HUGE, Gentle Reader. Huge. It proves what everyone except Teapubbies and all the other “small government” and supply-side eedjits have known for decades: the Reagan Revolution was a huge mistake, a f***-up for the ages, even worse than when the Senate handed Rome to Caligula. The nation’s woeful retreat from its former stability to the shambles of the present day is, once and for all: The. Fault. Of. Reagan. Era. Republicans.
And the longer America keep electing these criminally idiotic, venal, fact-challenged, big-mouthed-but-walnut-brained f***wits, the worse it’s gonna get. We need to vote each and every “Republican” who is currently IN office OUT of said office. And that soon.
Maybe someday, when Repubs go back to the pre-Reagan days of ideological and political sanity; then, and ONLY then, can we allow them back into power. But frankly, friends, we can’t AFFORD these Teapublican nitwits any longer. They have cost us dearly, far too dearly, and done far too much damage to be trusted now.
Now you know who to blame. Time to do something about it.
Mr. Blunt and Cranky
We hear it all the time: no matter the issue, be it climate change, contraception, or even basic mathematics, far too many Politicos act as though their “faith” somehow equates to facts. Bull-f***ing-s***.
All the faith in the world does not make the Pill an abortion-inducing drug. It isn’t, and there is good science to prove that it isn’t. All the misapplied scriptural citations do not make climate change a hoax: again, science proves it isn’t.
And all the voodoo in America cannot make supply-side economics valid. It isn’t, wasn’t, and won’t be. All the data says it doesn’t f***ing work.
The Establishment Clause specifically rules out religion in our government. Period. So using “faith” as a policy tool isn’t just idiotic: it’s illegal.
So let’s make the penalty for the crime be de-election. Kick those fools out of their cushy jobs and let ’em try that faith scam in the real world once or twice. See how their “faith” is rewarded.
Mr. Blunt and Cranky
(Note: Faith is a wonderful thing when used where appropriate. Church, for instance.)
Falling gas prices have recently created a huge demand-side boost to our economy. Millions and millions of dollars worth of boost: serious money. The increase comes from families having a few hundred extra bucks a year to spend on things other than filling their tanks. That is the free market in action, folks: consumers consuming, and by so doing creating jobs where they spend that additional money.
Classic, common-sense, evidence-based economics. People making additional purchases with the money they are saving because of lower pump prices. Demand-side economic stimulus via the private sector. Somewhere in the Afterlife, Adam Smith is shouting “See? SEE, motherf***ers? Who’s the man? I toldjaso!”
And none, repeat NONE of those falling petrol prices had Thing One to do with tax breaks for millionaires. No, oil prices are falling because of supply and demand. Once again, class, all together: “supply AND demand”. But of course, “republicans” don’t care about anything but the supply side. Because that side has all the friggin’ millionaires and billionaires that can (and do) buy Teapubbie Senators and Congresscritters.
This blog has ofttimes posted about the complete and utter failure of supply-side “economics”, and the laughable Laffer Curve that it is based upon. (Click the links, Gentle Reader, lots of supporting data to be found if you folllow the breadcrumbs.)
Once again, all of the Post-Reaganista bulls*** has been exposed, in all of its fetid, malodorous splendor. The American economy used to grow, before these dark days, because sensible adults recognized that all sides and strata of the economy are interrelated, and that we needed to manage supply and demand, the rich and the poor, and everything in between. But because of the Voodoo Wing of the “Republican” Party (and by that we mean, “the entire f***ing GOP”) focusing ONLY on the supply side, we have naught but deficts, crumbling edifices, and corruption all around us.
The positive economic effects of falling prices for the consumer prove, once again, that the Teapublican party is, as usual, completely full of s***. Almost as full of it as the idiot voters who voted for them, or failed to vote against them. But hey, enjoy the cheap gasoline while it lasts; until the Teapubbies find yet another way to steal those extra dollars away from us, and hand it back to their supply-side patrons.
Mr. Blunt and Cranky
This blog sneers ofttimes at “Republicans” and their stupid-f*** “supply-side” economics. (Here is one example of said mockery.) The gist is: tried and true data-based economic practices are the way to succeed, and Randian, Lafferesque Voodoo economic policies are the way to fail.
In Kansas, one of several states that have decided Ayn Rand was the false Goddess they shall worship, Voodoo economics have had the result most of those in the Reality-Based community have predicted:
In Kansas, the right wing has completely run the show in the state capitol since the 2012 elections, when Sam Brownback (who became governor two years earlier) led a purge of moderate Republicans who were acting as a brake on his agenda in the state Senate. Kansas is now a laboratory for what would happen if conservative Republicans gained full control of government. Empowered state Republicans slashed taxes for the rich, arguing that an economic boom would follow. It didn’t, as job growth in Kansas has underperformed the national average (as has Scott Walker’s Wisconsin, another state that moved hard right around the same time). But what did follow was a huge hole in the state’s budget (while liberal-dominated California is running a surplus and paying down debt).. (Emphasis via Cranky)
In state after state, the predicted results have occurred: Voodoo economics have created a sort of Zombie economy. What might seem just a mildly amusing turn of phrase is in fact a devastating blow to those of us not in the 1% (said 1% motherf***ers not being in the least incommoded by the Undead Economy). The economy is limping along, barely alive as far as most of us can tell, and that is not a sustainable path.
In Kansas, Wisconsin, Ohio, and indeed across the nation, we see the results of “Republican” policies: and rotten results they have proven to be. Using millions of people to test their voodoo theories was unethical at the outset, and has since sucked most of the life our of our economy.
Unlike the zombies one sees in movies, our Repub-afflicted economy can be healed and brought back to life. All that is needed is to lay off the voodoo, apply some healthy policies, and the rotting ambulatory corpse of our nation will be restored to health.
And the first step of that cure? Get out and vote. Vote against each and every “Republican” in every race, in every location. Banish the witch doctors and bring back the trained, educated professionals that had served us so well for centuries. Ditch the dream of Supply-Side, and awaken to reality.
That ‘dream’ turned out to be a nightmare the likes of which even Romero could never have envisioned, anyway.
Mr. Blunt and Crankly
A return of $1.61 on a $1.00 investment is awesome, and you just can’t beat it. So why do all the “run our government like a business” types oppose it? Anybody with any actual business experience knows that you can’t hardly get that kind of bang for the buck.
The answer, alas, is that the right-wing nutjobs who oppose UI are uniformly incapable of doing basic math. The lot of them live in a fantasy world full of Ayn Rand and Laffer Curve claptrap, acting as if their fervent belief will somehow make their crazy ideology come true. Belief is NOT a substitute for actual numbers on investment and returns.
Speaking of investment; looking for a job costs money, and it is money well spent. As ChisholmTrailDem reports:
The last time I searched for a job my expenditures for just that purpose, while on UI mind you, was nearly $3000, most of it on fuel to go looking for a job, before I finally found one. And all of that came right out of my UI benefits, right along with all my other financial obligations.
No one seems to be talking about the cost of looking for a job. And those expenses come right out of UI checks. Now, not only can these people who have lost UI benefits not pay their bills, they also now have no money to look for a job.
Once again, Business 101; you have to spend money to make money. Teapublicans seem to think that money magically appears if you think it will. In reality, if you have no money to invest, you’ll get no return. People need Unemployment Insurance to invest in finding a job. So if you want people to earn a living, then Someone. Must. Provide. The. Capital. Required. That, friends, is how business works.
And there isn’t anybody else out there who is providing that investment. Not neighbors, not churches, not anybody. If the Government wants fewer people on public assistance, then the government must invest in getting people to work. Spending nothing provides nothing in return.
Spending money on Unemployment Insurance provides a proven and positive return. So the Repubs need to shut up, nut up, and pony up.
Mr. Blunt and Cranky
Mr. Blunt and Cranky has a tendency to throw gauntlets. Part of that is a personality trait, and part of it is designed to promulgate his viewpoint. When one issues a challenge, one must accept that the “challenge-ee” will pick the glove up and whup it right back at the challenger. And so it goes.
In some cases, the replies are piles of neatly arranged facts (real or alleged), with which the combatants duel away. This usually happens with economics and other quantifiable topics. But there are done subjects that are not as easily proven or disproven, and that’s where we can’t always settle on a common view.
For example: last Saturday’s post about Steubenville , in which this writer threw down on the town for their lack of action in the face of a truly horrific rape crime spree.
A lot of responses came back, alleging bias, assumptions, tendentiousness, and so forth. All reasonable thoughts, and worthwhile discussion topics. However, no one came back with any proof to counter the original post: rather, the replies were either themselves based on inference and anecdotal evidence, or were naught but ad hominem attacks.
It is always possible that your humble correspondent is full of s***. If you can prove that 90 % of Steubenvillians are in fact bravely and loudly fighting back against the rape culture that permeates their city, just forward your evidence along and a full retraction will be published.
Bring it. It would be good to be proven wrong on this topic.
Mr. B & C
This week, the Crown O’ Polished Turds has thousands of worthy recipients: anyone and everyone who still pushes Austerity as a solution for an economy in recession. It hasn’t worked, doesn’t work, and won’t work in the future. Like Supply-Side economics, it is a theory with no supporting evidence and lots of information proving it wrong.
Recent examples include Greece and the rest of the EU, as well as Great Britain. The record pretty clearly proves that Austerity Does. Not. Work.
So to all the s*** heads pushing yet another reverse-Robin-Hood scam, we present even more s*** to put on top of your noggins. Wear it with pride, and to warn the rest of us of your approach.
Mr. B & C
PS: remember the huge 1991 Japanese recession, where they tried Austerity to fix the economy? They are STILL in a recession, 22 years later.
bluntandcranky 