Tax cuts for the rich don’t create jobs – period

Thought this article on truthout actually tells the truth about the myth that tax cuts for the rich create jobs. It says it right off the top: “Let’s cut the baloney about jobs and rich people’s taxes. If corporate profits automatically turned into jobs for the little folk, the unemployment rate would be plummeting.”

That is what I ask all my friends in love with keeping the Bush tax cuts for the rich. If the tax cuts are so necessary to create jobs then where are all the jobs that were created during the time the tax cut has been on the books?

Companies don’t create jobs because they have extra money jingling in their pockets. They take on new workers when they want to expand, and right now the demand’s not there to warrant that growth. Corporations are in the business of maximizing profits for the benefit of their managers and shareholders. They’re not in the business of creating jobs, nor should we expect them to be.

And so how should we respond to Republican claims that restoring Clinton-era income tax rates for the wealthiest 2 percent would destroy jobs? We shouldn’t. They are irrelevant.

An employment policy based on further enriching the richest Americans — who may or may not spend their wealth on job-creating ventures — is like trying to feed chickens in the barnyard by dropping feed from an airplane. It’s far more logical to focus tax cuts on activities that are likely to expand American business.

The Rich Are Not Going to Give Us Jobs

Teabaggers can’t handle the truth

The best part of this past week’s Tea Bag protest sponsored by Fox News happened in Pensacola Florida when a person who agreed to speak told the crowd the truth. That those making less than $250,000 will be taxed less and the blame for the economic crisis we face lies squarely on the Republican party and the Bush administration.

Sinfonian, a blogger at Blast Off!!! blog, has the details:

Seriously — I didn’t realize there would be an opportunity to speak, but they were practically begging folks to come up and say a few words … and I was right there…

I enjoyed the part when I asked, “How many here make less than $250,000 a year?” and there’s a big cheer … then it goes quiet again when I tell them they’ll pay less in taxes under the Obama plan. That’s about when the murmuring started …

My favorite part, though, is as I continue to gripe about the years from 2000 to 2008 (yeah, it’s ’01 to ’09, but you have to “speak to your audience,” y’know), and then I hit them with “place the blame where it belongs: squarely on the Republican Party and the Bush administration,” they pretty much lost their shit at that point. That was fun.

DFH blogger speaks at Pensacola Tea Party … and lives to tell the tale

Here’s the video of the event:

Now we know why the Republican party requires you to sign a loyalty oath before being allowed to attend one of their events. How else to you suppress the truth?

My only other comment about the events on the 15th is that it made me sad to see so many ignorant racist people involved with the protest. I know it will take time to reverse the Alfred E Bush dumbass effect from the past 8 years but it still makes our country look bad.

*Update 4/18/09*

Actually I had planned not to make any more comments about the Fox News Teabag movement until I came across a great point by writer Matt Taibbi:

In other words teabaggers don’t mind paying taxes to fund the salaries of Bolivian miners, Lou Gerstner’s stock options, deliveries of “sailboat fuel,” the Hermes scarves on Sandy Weill’s jet pillows, or even the export of their own goddamn jobs. But they do hate it when someone tries to re-asphalt their roads, or help bail their slob neighbor out of foreclosure. And God forbid someone propose a health care program, or increased financial aid for college. Hell, that’s like offering to share your turkey with the other Pilgrims! That’s not what America is all about! America is every Pilgrim for himself, dammit! Raise your own motherfucking turkey!

Oh, and there’s one other thing. I heard today from Steve Wamhoff of Citizens for Tax Justice. He had an interesting tidbit to offer on the teabagging movement. According to his research, 39% of respondents with incomes below $30,000 told the Gallup agency that they felt that federal income tax levels were “too high.” Which is interesting, because only 32% of respondents in that income category will pay any federal income taxes at all on their 2008 income. You can draw your own conclusions.

The really irritating thing about these morons is that, guaranteed, not one of them has ever taken a serious look at the federal budget. Not one has ever bothered to read an actual detailed study of what their taxes pay for. All they do is listen to one-liners doled out by tawdry Murdoch-hired mouthpieces like Michelle Malkin and then repeat them as if they’re their own opinions five seconds later. That’s what passes for political thought in this country. Teabag on, you fools.

Teabagging Michelle Malkin

I agree with Taibbi. Everyone at those Teabag parties are absolute morons…..

Don’t they know what it means to Tea Bag someone?

There is this “movement” going around by rich white guys who hate change and drawing on their peons of bigots, religious zealots, and freaky militia types to protest “high taxes” and “run away” spending by the current administration of President Obama. They will be holding tea parties across the country and asking people to “tea bag” Congress – by sending them a tea bag – to harken back to the Boston Tea Party during the American Revolution. Besides being a silly protest, not to mention the funny of using “tea bagging”, it shows how inept the conservatives are and how they can’t even come up with any new ideas.

Fox News – you know the guys who are looking out for the common man – is hyping the tax protests to take place on April 15th.

Today, in our time, we need to make a similar point in the face of arrogant power. And you can, too, on April 15, when millions of Americans will gather in peaceful protest across the country, protesting against the evils of over-taxation and its wicked handmaidens, over-spending and over-regulation.

If you visit the Web site of Tax Day Tea Party, you will find plenty of information on how and where to get connected to a tea party–or how to start your own tea party.

Plenty of big names will be involved, ranging across the country. Glenn Beck will be in Texas and Newt Gingrich will be in New York City. Sean Hannity will be in Atlanta. Neal Cavuto will be in Sacramento. And many, many more–FOX News and FOX Nation folks will be providing full coverage.

Tea Parties: A Great Part of American History–And America’s Future

Of course it is a silly protest.

It is protesting the rise in taxes of those who make more than $250,000 a year. Under Obama’s plan, that segment is the only one who will see their taxes go up. But don’t let the facts get in the way of the thick heads at Fox and their peon fans.

They still think it is cool to claim that there are high taxes or run away spending but I wonder where they were when Bush demolished a budget surplus he got in 2001 and ran up a huge deficit.

Also the people at Fox and their fans still haven’t offered any evidence that “we” pay too much in taxes or that spending is running away. They just don’t like Obama and his plan. It is a simple protest against a Democrat.

What does this say about conservatives when they lose at the ballot box and they talk about “revolution”, “tea parties”, “taking the country back”, “gun ban”, and on and on and on – instead of figuring out why their message failed to gain them votes in 2008. It is a bit childish to me.

No one has proven that taxes are too high, have never offered any comparison, or why anyone should care.

I also like how people’s brains turn off when they think “tax cuts” will solve the economic crisis we are in when they didn’t help in the first place and may have actually led to the crisis in the first place.

They need to grow up and take some ownership of the problem and work on REAL solutions and stop crying in their pillows.

These “protesters” also have a problem with talking about tea bags:

What happens when rich elitists get to decide on a budget for all Americans? We get the Senate version of the stimulus bill. *sigh*

Well, this week, the political elites who live in the Senate decided that we didn’t need to help the states,. our schools, or our health. The Senate version of the stimulus plan, the one needed to keep this country from driving over a cliff, removed $86 billion dollars of spending that would’ve had an immediate effect in the country – money to the states and education. Yes, the bubble returns to Washington. Douchebags!

Some of the listed cuts in the Senate version include:

$40 billion State Fiscal Stabilization
$16 billion School Construction
$7.5 billion of State Incentive Grants
$5.8 billion Health Prevention Activity
$1 billion Head Start/Early Start
$2.25 billion Neighborhood Stabilization

What the Senate’s cut: Funds for states and schools

Or as Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) said on her Twitter: Proud we cut over 100 billion out of recov bill.Many Ds don’t like it, but needed to be done.The silly stuff Rs keep talking about is OUT.

Yes, funding the states and education is silly stuff….. classy!

Paul Krugman (remember – the guy who is actually an economist and who won a Nobel Prize) said in his New York Times column:

Now the centrists have shaved off $86 billion in spending — much of it among the most effective and most needed parts of the plan. In particular, aid to state governments, which are in desperate straits, is both fast — because it prevents spending cuts rather than having to start up new projects — and effective, because it would in fact be spent; plus state and local governments are cutting back on essentials, so the social value of this spending would be high. But in the name of mighty centrism, $40 billion of that aid has been cut out.

What the centrists have wrought

And why did this happen? Krugman has an idea:

[C]entrism is a pose rather than a philosophy. And to support that pose, the centrists are demanding $100 billion in cuts in the economic stimulus plan — not because they have any coherent argument saying that the plan is $100 billion too big, not because they can identify $100 billion of stuff that should not be done, but in order to be able to say that they forced Obama to move to the center.

Appeasing the centrists

It is all about being bipartisan – you know where the minority party gets what it wants in full – even though they are in the minority. It’s the bizzaro Congress.

Meanwhile the Wall Street douchebags will be getting more money to spend on hookers and blow…. well does it really matter? They still don’t have any rules on the use of their bailout funds.

*sigh*

Why do Congressional Republicans hate America?

Well we know from their “leader” and gas bag Rush Limbaugh that he wants President Obama to fail. Now we find out that Congressional Republicans are being jackasses about the proposed stimulus bill. The question is why? It’s because the 2010 elections are coming up and Republicans think they can get elected again if the attempt to save America is defeated or damaged enough not to work. They want President Obama to fail too. I think it is nothing but petty bullshit from a party that has no idea how to help the struggling economy and were in fact responsible for screwing the hooch in the first place.

The Republican playbook is about standing in opposition, knowing full well that the Democratic Congress is going to pass a stimulus package. Their next step is to go home and sell to what’s left of their constituencies the notion that if we had listened to them, things would be far rosier. As a minority, a control group is unlikely to emerge that can disprove false numbers based on false rhetoric. They can go back and campaign in two years whether or not Obama’s plan creates anywhere close to the number he hopes and tell the world, and claim that their plan would have provided double the number.

The minority role in government should be about balancing the need of their constituencies with real ideas that create a stronger way of finding a solution. In the modern era of politics Rush Limbaugh style, it is all about spewing hate and misinformation in the guise of governing for the good of the people. The very people that the Obama plan will help most, are the very same people that are being preached to by the likes of Limbaugh and his puppets in Congress. 

Republicans Clearly Are Willing to Let This Country Collapse if They Think it Will Win Them Elections

And the media – also known as the Villagers – come along for the fire sale because…. well because they are so insulated in their little GOP controlled bubbles, they think spewing discredited GOP talking points is being objective.

The networks like to have the same tired debate format with the same hired analysts debating with “sound and fury” that usually “signifies nothing” to most of America. Last week the media chose to have Republicans like John Boehner, who helped create the situation we’re in, dominate the airwaves, which does nothing but muddy up the discussion on our rapidly failing economy. And which leads Villagers like Chuck Todd to proclaim that Republicans have won the spin wars. It’s a “spending bill” now.

Why is it called a “spending bill”? Because the Villagers have decided that the Republicans have won the PR war over the stimulus package. How does that tired argument help this country in a time of crisis? I know the spin wars play a role when messaging is concerned because Americans get a lot of their news through the TV and the elitists get aroused by all this nonsense, but it’s killing us. Please Stop It. C&L has often documented how the media tries to elect our politicians, (They chose Bush over Gore, How did that work out?) but now they are trying to decide how this very important stimulus package will be dealt with.

Please, where’s the meat? Stop playing games with our lives. Put people on who can explain it coherently. Economics is complicated. Sound bites aren’t enough. Obama was elected to bring change to the economy, not to debate the merits of tax cuts all over again. We had that discussion for 18 months and Obama won. Tax cuts lost. Why is the media ignoring that fact? John McCain ran on tax cuts to save us and he lost. Now he’s telling his supporters that he’s going to vote NO on the stimulus plan and wants them to sign a petition. You lost the election badly. Democrats have solid majorities everywhere you look, but not when it comes to the media that is supposed to inform us and not play “spin wars’ with the country. 

Why aren’t there hundreds of economists on my TV explaining the stimulus package?

So how does that go again – the media has a liberal bias???? Excuse me while I laugh.

The fact is 1 or 2% of the proposed plan might be considered “pork” – that is not directly related to stimulus spending – yet that tiny portion of an 800 billion plus bill is getting 90% of the focus along with more talk about a worse plan like more tax cuts.

At least there is one Democrat with a spine to tell the truth and get airtime at the same time:

In the past few days, I’ve heard criticisms that this [stimulus] plan is somehow wanting, and these criticisms echo the very same failed economic theories that led us into this crisis in the first place, the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems, that we can ignore fundamental challenges like energy independence and the high cost of health care, that we can somehow deal with this in a piecemeal fashion and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.

I reject those theories. And so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change.

President Obama

I know we will have a stimulus bill passed but I fear it might be watered down too much because the Dems missed the PR boat.