America the Stupid

I'm going to post on two completely separate topics, yet ones I feel illustrate just how dumb the average public is. Yes, I just called most of the people in our country dumb and I believe it. You can be highly intelligent and still be dumb sometimes. I'm living proof.

Anyway, first. Why do middle class Americans feel this desperate need to protect the wealthy from higher taxes? I understand, no one likes taxes. I can accept that.

I also understand we cannot tax our way out of our current spending problem. Ok.

I do not understand why average people, people who's real wages have been steadily declining since the 60s, are protecting those who are making them have less money. When the super-rich, not the 500k-1 million a year people, the REALLY REALLY rich, pay less taxes than ever, and our economy is still spiraling downward with rising unemployment, why can they not see that cutting taxes has nothing to do with spurring economic growth anymore? In the pre-global economy maybe that worked (I don't know) but I KNOW it is not working now.

I'm fairly certain that raising taxes on the ultra-rich, changing capital gains laws and trading laws so that big brokerage firms can't just churn stocks to make fees, and creating true incentives for job creation in the US would all do more to benefit the economy than anything currently being done. If you knew the government was going to take 70% of your income in taxes, might you not lessen your income? Might more of it be available to pay employees and hire new employees?

Maybe stocks would go back to being used to raise capital for companies instead of currently being used as a gambling tool and a way to make $10 off someone else's $1.

But no, apparently a vast segment of middle class America thinks this is bad. They appear to think that the relatively small cabal of ultra-rich that do essentially control our economy (this is NOT crazy conspiracy talk, its a simple fact that a tiny percentage of 1% of our population controls the VAST majority of wealth, hence, they essentially control the economy) is a good thing, that they should be left alone, and that all of them deserve every last penny they made. Sure many of them didn't make it by building factories or doing anything more than coming up with a new way to shuffle imaginary money around inside computers, but hey, that's something right?

Now, an interesting thing I've noticed about many of these same people is a dislike of immigrants and a borderline (if not outright) racist attitude towards certain minority groups, usually hispanic and black. They blame the hispanics for illegally coming here to take our jobs, traffic drugs, and ruin our health care system. They call blacks lazy, gang bangers and worthless.

Well, let me point out a few issues with those thoughts.

First, the reason illegal immigrants come here is because for years now jobs have been made available to them. How do you think so many of those massive homes were built so inexpensively during the housing boom? Union labor? HAH. Much was with cheap, and often illegal, immigrant labor. Same with farming, landscaping, meat processing and a large number of other industries. To keep prices low, use cheaper labor! Its not that Americans won't do the jobs, its that American's won't do the jobs for the wages the companies are willing to pay. Nor do I blame them. The rush of illegals has slowed during EVERY economic downturn as there are less jobs. The vast majority don't come to mooch, they come to work. And if there is no work, they don't come.

Second, to drug and gang violence. Mexico is currently in the midst of a war. The drug cartels kill thousands every year and some northern cities are practically under siege. Now, often, it is Mexicans or other hispanics bringing the drugs in and distributing them. But who's buying them? White people.

White people are the biggest consumers of most drugs out there. Partially its because there are more of them, but its also because they can afford them. Cocaine is pricey. Good weed costs money. Its supply and demand. There is a demand for drugs in America, therefore someone is going to supply it. I'm not condoning the drug trade, its horrible, but if you want drug violence to stop, stop buying drugs. Pretty dang simple really.

Finally, the "black" situation in America. Its far from simple. I'm not going to excuse the behavior of too many blacks in America. However, I can understand it. We have treated them as second class citizens, then created well meaning laws that enabled them instead of helping them. There are no simple solutions here, but it is far beyond a "black problem." It is an American problem and prejudice and blame do nothing to move our country forward.

Americans are stupid because they refuse to ever point the finger at themselves. They continue to elect crooks. They continue to allow judges to destroy our electoral system. They continue to protect the wealthy who give back a fraction of what they consume. They refuse to see why people come to this country illegally. The refuse to stop buying illegal drugs, or allowing the legalization of certain drugs to help stem the constant violence. They refuse to take accountability for past issues and see how those issues can still be affecting people today. They refuse to care about how their actions effect other countries and then are incensed when those countries say negative things about the US.

America is not a city on a hill. We aren't the pinnacle of civilization, shining for the world to see. We are a unique nation that can do much good, but we also do much harm, both inwardly and outwardly. Until we accept that we aren't special, we aren't inherently better than others and begin to work on our own problems, things will continue to get worse for the vast majority of the nation.

But, if we want to keep pointing fingers in every other direction, well, we can do that too.

Did I ramble enough here? I'm just tired of people being idiots. I'm not saying I'm always right, but I am saying too many people are never right. And they can't even see that.

The GOP is broken...and the Democrats are missing out.

Leadership. Its a word that's bandied about in various walks of life. Its something that is completely and utterly lacking in too many facets of life. Our current president has lacked it, as have the leadership in the House and Senate both under Republican and Democratic leadership.

The GOP however, are broken. The Democrats are a joke to a large degree, but the Republican party which is completely beholden to Grover Norquist's "we can't raise taxes at any cost" mantra are broken.

Did you read about the GOP's suggestion on how to raise revenue? It can't be taxes, we'll sell some gov't land. What? Seriously? This is the same joke that states with "balanced budget amendments" (like Illinois) have been doing for years.

We don't want to raise taxes, so we'll sell something that is finite. Brilliant.

People can disagree on how to cut the deficit. Its fine to compromise, but the GOP refusal to allow taxes to be raised, at least to pre-Bush tax cut level is moronic. (Oh, and to the point of lack of leadership Obama's caving on extending the Bush tax cuts is but one of many examples.)

You cannot cut spending out of this. Let me put it this way, you would have to cut EVERYTHING THAT IS NOT MEDICARE, SOCIAL SECURITY AND DEBT PAYMENTS out of the budget to balance it. EVERYTHING.

I'm not saying cuts don't need to be made, they do. I'm not saying tough decisions don't have to be made, they of course do. I'm not saying I'll be happy with where some of the cuts come from, I won't. But tax increases (which are actually closer to a normalization to the pre-Bush era) have to be part of this. And serious tax law changes must happen so that hedge fund managers cannot pay less % in taxes than a doctor or engineer.

If the GOP wants to seriously contend for the presidency and have any sort of legitimacy not built on fear and hatred then moderate party members must stand up and speak out. Currently we have a GOP that is controlled by the moderately far right and the really far right (just stopping short of the extreme far right). This hatred of all things "tax" related while they were happily spending away during the Bush years MUST END. Oh, and yeah, it'd be nice if the President had stood up on that issue when the Bush tax cuts came up for extension last year. See, I'm not just one sided on this.

The GOP desperately needs some members who can still stand for traditional Republican values without being borderline crazy. I'd prefer to have an option to vote for besides Democrat or no one.

We ain't broke

The current whining and handwringing in Congress over the US being so far in debt, the deficit, and other financial woes isn't a bad thing except they keep saying we're going broke.

They need to shut up and stop fearmongering. The US isn't close to broke. They just don't want to do the necessary things to help right the ship.

Here is a lovely column on the subject, but what the Republicans in Congress (and our President who suddenly has moved amazingly centrist when it comes to fiscal policy) need to understand:

You look like horrible evil people when you're attempting to cut subsidies to help pay poor people's energy bills in the winter and yet a man who made 5 BILLION, yes, 5,000,000,000 last year paid only 15% federal tax on the bulk of it. (To say nothing of wanting to cut all funding for the CPB which helps fund PBS and NPR.)

Is there wasteful spending in Congress? Of course! Are there programs that can be cut/merged/etc? Of course! Should we make some higher tax brackets on the super-rich? OF FREAKING COURSE!!!!!!

Why someone who makes millions of dollars a year pays the same percentage of tax as someone who makes hundreds of thousands is nonsensical. They may even pay less, percentage-wise, depending on how they made most of their money.

I'm all for attempting to reshape the Federal budget, but what is killing us right now is not the social safety net programs.

Its two wars that went un-funded for most of their terms.

Its a defense budget that keeps gobbling more and more money (oh, wait, they're going to try to cut $12 billion a year for the next few years...that's 1.8% a year off the DoD budget).

(An aside on defense spending. "The U.S. Department of Defense budget accounted in fiscal year 2010 for about 19% of the United States federal budgeted expenditures and 28% of estimated tax revenues. Including non-DOD expenditures, defense spending was approximately 28–38% of budgeted expenditures and 42–57% of estimated tax revenues. According to the Congressional Budget Office, defense spending grew 9% annually on average from fiscal year 2000–2009.")

Its the lowest tax rates in 50 years on the richest 1% of the people in America.

Its the corporations that are sitting on a collective 2 TRILLION in cash but aren't hiring new workers, opening new plants, or generally creating jobs that would get America working.

I completely understand that we must be cautious because whenever a dollar is allocated its almost impossible to unallocate it down the road. However, just because bad decisions were made in the past, they don't need to be compounded by bad decisions now.

Also, a personal note on the article. Its written pretty fairly , but I must point out that while the last budget surplus we had was under a Democratic President (Clinton) he was a very moderate Democrat and actually fell more towards the right fiscally. He had a Republican majority in Congress when they did more than just cut taxes and spend as well. Just wanted to add that clarification.

So America, wake up and stop panicing. We aren't on the brink of federal financial meltdown. The people in power just don't want to derail their gravy train of donations from Wall Street in implementing sensible tax rates for the super-rich or a tax on large financial transactions.