Republicans and Conservatives seem to be long on advice to “Get Out Of Debt And Save Your Money” but as far as I have been able to discern, they never quite get around to offering any sensible or workable suggestions or plans as to how this may be done.
As I see things, their usual mantra for solving the national debt crisis goes something like this, “Give More Tax Breaks To The Wealthiest 1% who are the “Job Creators” and sock it to the other 99% whose only purpose in Life is to live the good life on the backs of the “Honest Taxpayers” (The filthy rich).
Government Spending does not seem to me to be one of their favorite options for getting the sluggish economy going again even though it was Government Spending (On a massive scale) that allowed us to realize victories during World War II and it was huge Government Spending that underwrote the greatest economic booms (After WWII and on up through the 1950s) that this nation has ever experienced.
But I have long since learned, “Never try to confuse Radical American Conservatives with facts. They have their own set of facts that they have collected through the years of listening to the myth-makers on their convenient and comfortable 24-hour-a-day
“Alternative Universe Media” and nothing or no one is going to tell them anything different than what they “Believe.”
I deal with that reality every day on this blog as the trolls flock to my posts with their mindless little diatribes and endless arguments about why I am wrong on almost everything I address. But I have learned that the best way to deal with them is to ignore them because they are not really saying anything anyway. (I love the power of the delete button.)
They “Know That They Know What They Know” and Heck (better word to describe the bad place where devils live and fire tortures souls) or high water does not seem to be able to move them off their locked-in thinking.
Over the years, it has occurred to me that the Conservative mindset is to act on “Faith” (Belief) first and look for facts at a later time. “Faith” seems to be a big thing with Conservatism. Issues are, in my opinion, more often decided on what they “Believe” no matter what the facts are and they seem to me to be very quick to argue on any issue, “I know what I know that I know” and they often appear to be”Locked In” on attitude and it seems to me like nothing is going to shake them. Nothing! That has been my experience with the ones I have known anyway.
So my point is that even though Government Spending has been the proven engine of economic recovery for generations, the truly “Committed” among Conservatists (I wanted to say “Fanatical” but that isn’t nice) will argue til they are blue in the face that it just ain’t so!
Their silver bullet seems to be rewarding the fortunate few 1% at the top of the national food chain. In my view, feeding the material desires of the fat cats is the ultimate gain, personal reward and Valhalla of Reichtie in America today.
What they fail to realize is that giving massive tax breaks to the already obscenely rich is nothing more or less than one gigantic, bloated, resource-consuming, divisive, mega-government-spending program.
With one breath, Rightie complains about “Big Government” and with the next breath Rightie explains all the good reasons that the mechanism of Big Government should be used to promote, advance, secure, proliferate or spread the failed ideology of their too-often vaporous wish dream fantasies and to foist these empty notions onto the American People.
They don’t want to spend Taxpayer Dollars on things that will actually help “The Little Guy” (The not-so-fabulously-wealthy) but they have no complaint whatsoever about stuffing the national treasure down the gullets of the “Have It All” hogs, now do they?
In all the history of this great country of ours, the Economy has fared better under Democrats than it has ever hoped to under Republicans and any well-respected and widely-known Economist worth his or her salt has said so. (Do some research in some Economic History Books that have not fallen to the ax of Right Wing Revisionists and you will see that what I am saying has been considered to be the case for a long long time.)
President Franklin D. Roosevelt raised the sinking economy through the big-spending programs of “The New Deal” and, in my opinion, it is a darned good thing that he did. Conservatism seems to hate the mention of “The New Deal” but I can almost guarantee that if it had not been for that spectacularly successful event in our history, many of them wouldn’t be so cocky today because they would still be living in the dark ages of poverty and, perhaps, even squalor.
Now many of the intransigents and the obstructionists of that treatable condition I often refer to as Radical Conservatism are wagging their sulphurous tongues against President Obama because of TARP, The Stimulus Programs and the “Bail Outs.”
They simply cannot realize (Or do not want to admit) that these initiatives actually saved many of what I consider to be their worthless rear ends and I think the reason for that is that many of them are angry that the money was spent on things to help America and not on more and bigger tax breaks for their cronies in their alabaster towers of privilege and elitism.
If there is a “Pathology” rampant in the land today (As many on the dark side of Conservatism like to claim) then that pathology is not found in trying to boost a lagging economy with some infrastructure spending or in saving the auto industry—that pathology is found in sticking to the same old tired, worn-out policies of failure and economic disaster that they have been wed to from time immemorial. That would be, in my opinion, where the pathology lies–in the pathological incompetence of the visionless and the leaderless who always oppose and obstruct every good thing that Liberals, Democrats and Progressives ever try to do or get done.
In my opinion, President Roosevelt’s “New Deal” saved America’s Economy following World War II.
And so, what is the Republican Plan for The United States?
Posted by John Liming (Political Opinions)
Illustration above, “Political Investing” is from “Printthetruth” and is used under an appropriate Creative Commons License.
Wouldn’t the simplest way to help the average American’s Piggy Bank simply be to decrease the number of unemployed? A novel concept I realize, and almost simplistic, yet something your current Federal government has yet to grasp.
Government does not create long term self sustaining jobs, sure they pay lip service to it, but the reality is the only jobs they can create are ones in their own bureaucracy. These jobs can in no way, shape, or form ever be considered “self sustaining” as they require a continuous influx of taxpayer money. The irony of it is that many of these bureaucratic jobs exist simply to collect taxpayers money to in fact sustain their own positions, and as the size of the bureaucracy increases so does the number of individuals required to deprive citizens of their income to simply sustain this bureaucratic leviathan.
The only say government has in job creation is one of getting out of the way of private business, so that these businesses can be innovative and create and supply products and services that the consumer chooses to trade their hard earned dollars for. As this demand is created, more people are hired, as more people go to work there is more disposable income, more disposable income leads to increased demand for products and services, which in turn leads to hiring more people to fill the demand. Pretty simple cycle, one that the government has no place in other than to act as a roadblock.
Just once I would like someone to point to a true self sustaining job that government has created, one that does not require ongoing funding from taxpayers into perpetuity, or a massive investment at the onset that far exceeds the actual net benefit of the job. There’s a challenge for you, name one. I look forward to your response. Please, I beg of you prove me wrong
Signed
A Canadian Commenter
PS: Feel free to look to Canada for this elusive self sustaining government created job, but be forewarned you have more chance of finding a living, breathing Sasquatch (Big Foot) than you do of ever finding proof of existence of such a job.
Ah, the power of being able to sustain continuous attention from a loyal and devoted readership is satisfying beyond belief.
Any luck finding that one elusive job? If not I just heard a report that a Sasquatch was spotted in the interior of British Columbia.