Yesterday was the President's Deficit Commission and today is the Peterson summit. The very serious people (who didn't know there was a housing bubble) are telling us that our own government providing benefits to our people is baaaad and very unserious. (Military spending? What's that?)
So what about that deficit, and the Social Security crisis? Always, always keep in mind that the whole bruhaha over Social Security comes out of a strategic plan to get rid of it. As Paul pointed out in his post and as I have written about,
This strategy goes back to a larger Wall Street effort to get rid of Social Security. A 1983 Cato Institute Journal document, "Achieving a Leninist Strategy" by Stuart Butler of Cato and Peter Germanis of Heritage lays it out for us. The document is still available at Cato, and select quotes are available at Plotting Privatization? from Z Magazine. ...
[quotes from the Cato strategy document]
... Every time you hear that "Social Security is going broke" you are hearing a manufactured propaganda point. Every time you hear that "Social Security is a Ponzi scheme" you are hearing a manufactured propaganda point. Every time you hear that "Social Security won't be there for me anyway" " you are hearing a manufactured propaganda point.
Don't fall for it. If they can gut Social Security they stand to make a lot of money but you stand to lose your retirement.
AND never forget that the deficit was also manufactured on purpose, to defund government's ability to regulate business and protect citizens, and to force a shrinking of what the corporate right calls "big government." Government is We, the People making the decisions for ourselves, "big government" is We, the People making more decisions for ourselves. The only alternative is the wealthy and big corporations making the decisions for us instead. Don't fall for it. We didn't have deficits until we cut taxes on the rich.
A consumption-based economy does better when consumers have more to spend. Perhaps not cause-and-effect, though I suspect so, but after FDR raised top tax rates the economy grew dramatically. The 90% top rate years under FDR, Truman, Eisenhower and the beginning of the Kennedy years were the years when we built the middle class. And remember, after Clinton raised top tax rates only modestly the economy grew. How's it been doing since Bush's tax cuts for the rich?
A look at economic growth rate charts shows a steady decline in the decades since top tax rates began to fall. Is it just a coincidence that the economy booms after tax increases that provide revenue to invest in new "seed corn," and that the economy declines as we reduce taxes?
STATE BLOGS
