Who Will Be the First Teabagger to Claim That Tax Cuts for the Rich Will Stop School Shootings?

I'm betting on Kentucky's own Tribble-toupeed Rand Paul.

They'll have to.  Because the foundation of their tax cut fetish is crumbling under their feet.

David Dayen at Firedoglake:

A couple months ago, under pressure from Republicans, the Congressional Research Service, basically the think tank of Congress, took down a study on tax rates for the rich and the economy that rebutted a key GOP argument, that tax cuts at the top spurred economic growth. It didn’t matter that the Congressional Budget Office found almost the same thing, Republicans didn’t want in print a study showing no relationship between tax cuts for the rich and growth. That would ruin their whole program.

 

Yesterday, the CRS republished the work, and while a bit of the language has changed – Republicans reportedly objected to the phrase “tax cuts for the rich” – the conclusion is exactly the same.

George Zornich at The Nation has the low-down on the "five CEOs who prove lower corporate taxes don't equal more hiring."

But you don't even need that proof because the idea that rich people create jobs never made sense.

You know who creates jobs?  Poor people.  Poor people and working people who spend every dime they have.  Think about it: rich people have a big pile of money.  Why should they go to all the trouble of using that money to build a business that would hire people - a business that might not show profits for years if ever - when they can stash that money in the Cayman Islands and sit back and collect guaranteed interest?

But what little money comes into the hands of poor and working people gets spent immediately at the grocery store and the gas station and the discount store, all of which now have more business and have to hire more workers and expand, which puts more money into the hands of working people, who spend it and create more business, and so on in the only kind of virtuous circle that actually does create jobs.

The role of government is that sometimes the money-for-poor-and-working-people virtuous circle get stalled in a recession and the only way to get it started again is for government to give money to the people who will spend it.  That can be direct cash payments or government jobs; either one works.

That's how and why giving money to poor and working people grows the economy and creates jobs, and giving money to rich people does jack shit - at best.