Politics Plus

We should all be aware enough to realize that with supply-side economics we have had for the last few decades, and offered still by Romney and Ryan, wealth never did trickle down.  It gushed up.  Nevertheless, one might think that our wealth would still help the economy regardless of who was spending it.  However, it wasn’t spent.  Instead it joined Willard’s money and grew legs.  Prepare to be shocked.

Capitalism has never before faced the demons of the past like it does today.

Karl Marx (1818-1883) may be proven right. He believed that periodic depressions would get worse and worse, until the masses would be moved to revolt and destroy the system. His dark prediction may be happening right before our eyes, but it is the economic historians who look back and fully recognize the drama with the benefit of time. Meanwhile, capitalism is stuck in a quagmire caused by inept policies within the capitalistic system.

The problem, specifically in America, is a bastardization of capitalistic democracy on two levels.

First, elite capitalists have exploited the system in their favour, starting with President Reagan’s Supply-side economics spoof, which is primarily responsible for the nation’s indebtedness. In fact, it was on Reagan’s watch that the U.S. became the world’s largest debtor nation because of tax breaks for the rich, carving out a big hole in federal tax receipts, but what’s even worse, much worse, is the wealthy elite’s fancy for stashing funds offshore, hiding more than enough uncollectible taxes to turn around the national debt problem.

According to a recent extensive study (July 2012) conducted by James Henry, former chief economist of McKinsey & Company, the wealthy elite have up to $32 trillion stashed away in offshore tax havens. This is twice the size of the U.S. economy, and remarkably, the study excluded ownership of tangibles like RE, yachts, fancy cars, and entire islands (metaphorically speaking, those hidden assets comprise the largest economy in the world… a tax free economy… a pure libertarian nation-state.)  No wonder U.S. federal tax receipts are so low; most of the taxable income is vacationing offshore! This is the crime of the century!… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <The UK Progressive>

Photo credit: Salon.com

When I studied Economics in college, the theories of Karl Marx made a lot of sense, but I understood that they have not panned out, because good government prevented it.  A progressive tax code and laws that empowered strong labor unions prevented the concentration of wealth that Marx predicted, and healthy regulation tamed at least some of the predatory practices of vulture capitalists, like Willard.  However Republican policies have allowed wealth to concentrate like never before, gutted the tax code so that most of the 1% pay a lesser effective rate than most middle class taxpayers, stripped workers of their union rights with so-called right to work laws, and deregulated to allow predatory capitalism.

Republicans love to keep harping on the national debt.  I checked the national debt earlier this morning, and it’s just a tad over $16 trillion.  Republicans want the poor and middle classes to pay that debt, when most of the debt was accumulated, while America’s wealth gushed up and was moved abroad.  If we could recover just half of what Willard and his 1% cronies hid away, that would wipe out the entire debt in one fell swoop.  I’m not suggesting anything that extreme… at least not yet, but you can be damn sure that the last thing we need is to put a 1% vulture capitalist in the White House or put the party that exclusively represents the 1% in any elected post.  Every Republican in office is one Republican too many.