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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (226501)

6/24/2013 12:54:48 PM

From: koan

Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 541375

A response to Republican's regarding the 20 trillion dollar statement:

When Bush was elected president our national debt was about 5 trillion dollars.

Bush spent another 5 trillion on two wars we did not need to fight and gave massive tax cuts to the rich. That was about another 5 trillion.

The remaining costs of those two wars will be trillions more over the life of our vets (medical and other expenses) . Then there is the depression Bush caused by not regulating the banks (e.g. fraudulent CDO's, CDS's and allowing Moody's and Standard and Poors to stamp junk bonds as triple AAa paper.).

That depression has taken trillions to bail out the world financial system (e.g. Paulson (Bush's treasury secretary) asked for 82 billion for AIG no questions asked). That money was a pass through authority to banks all over the world (e.g. Bundesbank).

We pay about 25% in Taxes while Denmark pays about 50% in taxes. If we were to tax the corporations at a reasonable rate and did not allow them to offshore their gains (like apple does) that would be trillions more.

Then if we spent that money on infrastructure it would rebuild our middle class and we would have more tax revenue and new businesses like after world war II. Krugman has a graph that showed exactly how that all worked.

In my opinion, that would be a good start at rebuilding our social system which we have let run down as the very rich (plutocrats ) used their power to rob from the middle class over the last 40 years. We need free education and universal health care for starters and rebuild our unions.

It is important to understand the rich and powerful always rob from those less powerful and have all through history. That is why democracy is so important it allows us to protect ourselves from them.

But if people vote to help the plutocrats take from us the middle class then democracy cannot solve our problems.

I took a long time to post this to your question, so anyone who disagrees, please write a thoughtful rebutle and don't just rag on it. OK?

To: koan who wrote (226501)	6/24/2013 1:12:27 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541375

"We have devolved to 65th in the world in income inequality without a peep. We have let the anti intellectual, anti government element run our country for 40 years and energized the plutocrats. We need to mitigate that." I think the plan our plutocrats have for us is to meet China in the middle as our wages shrink and Chinese workers grow. Not the plutocrats compensation, of course!

To: koan who wrote (226501)	6/24/2013 4:25:08 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541375

I think your description externalizes the problem and removes too much accountability for the individual. People ultimately have responsibility for their actions and while the things you name make it more likely for property crimes, there are other options to raise money that don't involve breaking into homes and terrorizing people. Dealing in low-level contraband is an example of a (arguably) morally superior (IMO) means of raising money if one is without resources. There are many countries with more poverty and lower theft and crime than we have. Anomie is a term to describe the detachment of individual from the rule of law. No amount of social spending will make a sociopath feel empathy for the people they robbed. Crime is not just about lack of opportunity because some people would NEVER steal from an individual, though they might panhandle, beg, shoplift or sell drugs. A significant number of people who feel marginalized may steal even when there are morally neutral alternatives in good economies. It isn't because they don't have a job or a social program, though that probably contributes to people making the robbery/theft choice in the margins. The graph below shows the statistics. Yes, sometimes theft is high where people are poor, but more often not... it clearly isn't about social spending.