For years the economic debate between the GOP and the Democrats has raged on unabated. For some inexplicable reason the Republicans have acquired the reputation of being the Party of finance, but when one looks at the facts, a starkly different picture emerges. Since WWII, the country has fared far better economically under Democratic control than it has under the GOP.
The GDP has grown 1.6 times faster under Democrats than under Republicans. Private sector job growth under Democrats has been 2.5% whereas under Republicans it has been 1.4%. Obama’s job creation performance has been better than any Republican president since WWII. He has created almost 10 million private sector jobs in 75 months of continual job growth since he took office.
Bill Maher took on this problem on his show. He pointed out that in California where they have an all Democratic government, the economy is booming; so much in fact that the state has just passed India and France to become the world’s 6th largest economy. They didn’t get there by lowering taxes and waiting for the billionaires that benefited to create jobs. If they had they’d still be waiting and still be where they were under Arnold Schwarzenegger’s GOP administration, waiting for something, anything, to trickle down.
No. They drove their economy up in the only way that works or makes sense. They raised taxes on the only people who can afford a raise and still remain part of a consumer-based economy, the rich.
It’s very simple and very logical; logic being unfortunately, something that the GOP is not comfortable or acquainted with. Rich people have the most money. If you tax them heavily they will still have the most money after taxes. They will still be able to live luxuriously. They can still buy. Middle class people have less money. If you tax the hell out of them, they will no longer have enough money to buy the luxury items that contribute to a booming consumer economy. Poor people have little money. If you over tax them they will starve and you will have to feed them. This is brilliantly illustrated by the Walton playbook of labor practices. A family of four with both parents working for Walton’s must get food stamps in order to survive. Those food stamps are paid for, not by Walton’s but by the rest of us. The logical conclusion; if you don’t consider some angry employee offing the Walton’s, is that poor people should pay some, albeit very low, taxes. Middle class people should pay some but fair taxes and the rich should pay the majority of taxes because they have the majority of the money and in doing so they will help the economy the most.
This is the conclusion at which the government of California has arrived, and it s very definitely working. On the other hand, in states like Louisiana where GOP governor Bobby Jindal has lowered taxes, employment has gone down, social programs have disappeared, infrastructure is almost non-existent and education is a joke.
As has always happened in the past, when the rich got tax cuts they pocketed the cash and gave the rest of us the middle finger.
This was also true in Kansas where Sam Brownback told us he found a new way. Of course it was only new to Sam. The billionaires in his state had been reaping its harvest for as long as they have that good old GOP government.
In Louisiana Jindal turned a billion dollar surplus into
a two billion dollar deficit. You can’t fix stupid. Miraculously, Jindal and Brownback are discovering that when you take in less money, you have less money to spend and even morons like them should understand that if you don’t spend, people have fewer jobs, less money and everyone gets poor.
In California, which now has a fully Democratic government that can forge ahead on liberal policies without interference from bumbling Republicans, the economy is booming. Cap and Trade, which the GOP kept warning us would create sky-high electric bills has resulted in one of the lowest electric rates in the country. Why? Because, it is forcing more renewable energy into production.
Californians did everything that conservatives warned against and their growth rate shot up to 4% the highest in the country and a $ 26 billion dollar deficit became an $11 billion surplus.
Of course the big warning that the conservatives have been leveling for years, now had to be faced. Would the rich flee the state for cheaper tax havens? Sure they would. Really? If you were a billionaire would you give up your private beach in Malibu for the desolate plains of low tax Kansas just to save in taxes, what you’d only spend on gas, to fly back and forth to someplace you would actually want to live.
This isn’t rocket science, friends, this is simple logic and it tells us very plainly that Republican economics are no longer, if they were ever, viable. The way to a strong economy is graded tax increases, strong government support for infrastructure rebuilding, minimum wage increases and strong regulation of corporate interests. Anyone that tells you anything else has an ax to grind or a con to advance. Let’s see how smart the voters really are.