As Pothole Season Opens, a Driver's Thoughts Turn to 45's Infrastructure Lies

Steve M:

And, of course, as Paul Krugman noted in November, what was proposed was never very populist:

To understand what’s going on, it may be helpful to start with what we should be doing. The federal government can indeed borrow very cheaply; meanwhile, we really need to spend money on everything from sewage treatment to transit. The indicated course of action, then, is simple: borrow at those low, low rates, and use the funds raised to fix what needs fixing.

But that’s not what the Trump team is proposing. Instead, it’s calling for huge tax credits: billions of dollars in checks written to private companies that invest in approved projects, which they would end up owning. For example, imagine a private consortium building a toll road for $1 billion. Under the Trump plan, the consortium might borrow $800 million while putting up $200 million in equity — but it would get a tax credit of 82 percent of that sum, so that its actual outlays would only be $36 million. And any future revenue from tolls would go to the people who put up that $36 million.

... what reason do we have to believe that this scheme will generate new investment, as opposed to repackaging things that would have happened anyway?

How Repugs Destroy Public Goods

They've been doing it for five decades: scream lies about high taxes, incite hatred against poor and minority communities and blame the "government" their own voters depend on. Repugs get elected, trash the place, leave it for Democrats to clean up, then point to the cleanup costs and scream more lies.  

 

Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo:

But the GOP never does anything that's not at least a twofer. Privatization — of roads and water systems, for example, or public schools via charter expansion — is not just about converting "We the People" assets into private profits for cronies. It's about disrupting the income streams of Democratic-leaning city governments. The goal is to weaken them politically, stripping them of revenue by creating a slow-rolling economic crisis that will force cities to either raise taxes or slash services or both, allowing Republicans in a few years to argue, See, see how badly Democrats have handled your economy? Elect us and we'll show you how it's really done.

No Infrastructure or Jobs; Just Corporate Welfare

Political Animal:

You’ll want to read what Ronald Klain had to say about Trump’s infrastructure plan.

…Trump’s plan is not really an infrastructure plan. It’s a tax-cut plan for utility-industry and construction-sector investors, and a massive corporate welfare plan for contractors. The Trump plan doesn’t directly fund new roads, bridges, water systems or airports, as did Hillary Clinton’s 2016 infrastructure proposal. Instead, Trump’s plan provides tax breaks to private-sector investors who back profitable construction projects. These projects (such as electrical grid modernization or energy pipeline expansion) might already be planned or even underway. There’s no requirement that the tax breaks be used for incremental or otherwise expanded construction efforts; they could all go just to fatten the pockets of investors in previously planned projects.

American Greatness and Who Tried to Kill It

From Charlie Pierce:

I wonder how that possibly could have happened in this country. How did we abandon our dreams of greatness that we demanded of our self-governing Republic. We didn't dig the Panama Canal. Our government did, after it stole the land from Colombia. We, as individuals, didn't tame the West. Our government did, with railroads and homesteading and the U.S. Cavalry. We didn't ourselves build the Hoover Dam. Our government did. We didn't create our own private space exploration. Our government did. 

How could the country have come to such a sorry pass? Perhaps a clue can be found in a speech given from the U.S. Capitol by a newly elected president on a cold, clear January morning in 1981.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. 

Sad.

The Limitless Benefits of Being White

Not to mention the infrastructure and economic foundation built by slaves and slavery.

Erik Loomis at lGB:

White people benefit each and every day from the legacy of slavery and racism. They can move to the suburbs to “give their children the best education” because they have better jobs and histories of redlining, restrictive covenants, job flight, and violence made the suburbs traditionally a white-only space. They benefit from a lack of police violence. They benefit from better jobs and education. They benefit each and every day. The middle class is built on a foundation of slavery and racism. If we are going to accept those benefits, we also need to pay up to even the playing field. Otherwise, we are just continuing to invest and benefit from a racist society.

And The Winner of Perfect VP for Any of the Final Fucking Four Is ....

None other than the man who put "poison the ni**ers" at the top of the GOP agenda.

DR Tucker at Political Animal:

May I suggest the ideal Republican vice-presidential candidate for whichever wingnut secures the GOP nomination this year: Michigan Governor Rick Snyder.

Is there any doubt that America’s worst governor would be the perfect partner for the 2016 Republican nominee? Snyder’s handling of the Flint water crisis succinctly symbolizes the GOP’s vision of government: penny-pinching, cold, scornful of the weak and vulnerable, operating with reckless disregard for future generations. The Republican base wants a truly conservative ticket: a Trump-Snyder or Cruz-Snyder pairing would deliver that dream.

Ever notice that Snyder doesn’t seem to have any real remorse or sorrow for his actions towards Flint’s residents? His “apology” in his January 19 State of the State address was a pathetic joke, one that failed to convince any sentient American. Snyder never gave a damn about the residents of Flint, and still doesn’t. The Snyder vision—the Republican vision—is that if you don’t have money, you’re not really a citizen.

Eight years ago, in an interview with Thomas Frank about President George W. Bush’s failures, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow observed:

[T]his is a problem of conservatism. This is a problem of letting people run government when they believe that government can’t work and ought not work.
No wonder Maddow has been so outraged by Snyder’s human-rights abuses, as we all should be. Maddow understands that Snyder is conservatism. He is continuing the dark tradition Ronald Reagan gave birth to 35 years ago when he declared, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

Yet government is not the problem per se. Government run by people who hate government is the problem. Government run by people who regard certain citizens as worthless moochers undeserving of the basic necessities of life is the problem.

We hear so much about the compassion so many Americans feel for the victimized residents of Flint. Yet we must acknowledge the sad reality that there are far too many Americans who simply don’t give a damn about the residents of Flint…who couldn’t care less that they’re drinking contaminated water…who turn a blind eye, a deaf ear and a cold heart to those whose health has been damaged for life as a result of Snyder’s deranged decision-making.

Those are the very same Americans who are embracing the hate-filled messages of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Those are the very same Americans who probably think Snyder is the real victim in the Flint crisis—the victim, of course, of “political correctness,” “race hustlers” and the “liberal media.”

Recall the repulsive running mates Republicans have selected over the decades. Richard Nixon in 1952. Spiro Agnew in 1968. Dan Quayle in 1988. Dick Cheney in 2000. Sarah Palin in 2008. Paul Ryan in 2012. Considering this track record, would Snyder really be that far-fetched of a choice?

Think about what animates the right today: Contempt for the mainstream media. Contempt for racial minorities. Contempt for government. Contempt for those outside of the right-wing tribe. Snyder would appeal to all of the right’s darkest impulses: selecting him as VP would be the ultimate bleep-you to progressives, the “political establishment” and the Fourth Estate. I wouldn’t put the selection of Snyder past this radicalized and reckless Republican Party. Would you?

It's about racism, because everything in this country is about racism.  Always has been, always will be. (pace Charlie Pierce.)

How Matt Bevin's Austerity Budget Will Destroy Kentucky

Just like austerity budgets from faux-libertarian conservative liars have destroyed Kansas and Louisiana and entire nations in Europe.  But the obscenely wealthy are even fatter while desperate workers submit to serfdom, so: win!

When Governor Lying Coward talks about "shared sacrifice" and "tough love," remember that neither he nor any of his billionaire buddies are going to be sacrificing anything or feeling any kind of love but the cock-sucking of more tax cuts.

Dave Johnson at Crooks and Liars:

Many say we should "run government like a business" and "save money" by "cutting spending" and "making government smaller." Does this work? Do We the People really save money by doing these things?

Infrastructure

SNIP

After the Reagan tax cuts we "made government smaller" in several ways that are coming back to bite us now. One way we "saved money" by not "changing the oil" was by deferring maintenance of the country's infrastructure – the water systems, levees, dams, roads, bridges, airports, ports, rails systems, electrical systems, and the rest of the things we all rely on to bring us safe water, get us to work, ship products and generally move our economy and live our lives.

Now the American Society of Civil Engineers' (ASCE) most recent "Infrastructure Report Card" estimates we need to spend $3.6 trillion just to bring the infrastructure up to where it should be, never mind catching up to the rest of the word with high-speed rail and smart electrical grid systems. The bill is getting more expensive every year, and people are dying as bridges, roads and other important infrastructure components fail. Thousands died in New Orleans when the levees failed.

SNIP

Flint

The Flint tragedy shows how much money "big government" actually saves us.

Michigan Republicans tried to "save money," "make government smaller" and run the city of Flint "like a business." Thousands of human beings ended up being poisoned. Now someone is going to have to pay to cover the health care needs of all those people. That someone might be the people themselves or maybe all of us will pitch in through our government, but a cost is a cost.

Someone will need to cover either the remedial education cost for all the kids whose brains were affected by lead, or the societal costs if this is not done. Then there is the cost to replace Flint's water pipes, the cost of plunging property values, the cost of all the businesses that will choose to leave or not locate in Flint.

Costs, costs, costs, some borne by government, most borne by individuals but costs nonetheless – because Republicans said we should "run government like a business" and "save money."

Flint shows how basic government spending saves all of us from paying the enormous costs of living with the danger of unsafe water.

Cutting Senior Nutrition Programs

The post "Here's A Sequester Cut You'll Feel In Your Gut" described the results from budget cuts forced by Republicans wanting to make government "smaller." The "sequester" cuts in senior nutritional programs caused seniors to need to be hospitalized for malnutrition – which costs government a tremendous amount more than the "savings" from cutting.

[F]or all the damage these cruel cuts do to actual, real people, they don’t even actually “cut” spending, they increase spending. Because doing cruel things to actual, real people leads to cruel results.

If government "saves money" by cutting nutritional programs, government ends up paying a lot of money to treat malnutrition. If government won't pay those costs because it is "saving money" by denying health care services those costs don't go away, they are just shifted onto individuals. The affected people have to pay, one way or another, with their money or their health. The communities they live in have to pay as its members suffer or become impoverished.

SNIP

Privatization

Local, state and Federally, government "save money" by privatizing services and selling buildings and other assets. But studies have shown what really happens when governments "save money" by privatizing.

What really happens when, say, a city "saves money" by privatizing, for example, its waste pickup services? The current employees, paid an OK salary, probably with good benefits, are laid off. The contractor hires people at low or minimum wage with few or no benefits. The business "saves money" by cutting back on personnel costs, services and maintenance of equipment.

The former city employees, if they can find jobs at all, will be paid very little, homes go into foreclosure – which lowers property values citywide. They stop being able to do much shopping, hurting the local economy. They likely will need public assistance, which means costs were shifted to another branch of government instead of being "saved." Their kids will need special services in the schools, as poor kids often do. And on it goes. Of course, they are no longer paying taxes.

Meanwhile the new workers won't be paid enough to purchase homes, do much shopping, or pay much in taxes. They probably will qualify for public assistance; their kids will need special attention in the schools.

The privatization scheme forces people into poverty and onto public assistance, eroding the tax base, forcing local wages and property values down and generally putting all of us further under the thumb of those who have convinced people who “private companies always do everything better than government.” The contractor companies are often specialists in avoiding taxation themselves. One thing private companies are good at is driving every benefit of our economy upwards to a concentrated and privileged few.

SNIP

Cost Shifting

Running government like a business doesn't take something important into account: Businesses try to shift costs onto others. When government "saves money" by cutting budgets the costs are still there, but they are shifted onto individuals. And often the total cost paid by all those individuals is much higher than if government took care of things, because of the rule of economy of scale as well as the government's negotiating power.

For example, government can "save money" by not funding a fire department, and not having a fire inspector. Of course, many of us will have to spend a lot of our own money to either pay for our own fire protection or risk the cost to rebuild our houses. And all of us would have to spend a lot of money if the whole town burns down. But hey, we "saved money" not paying for a fire department.

What about government "saving money" by cutting back on education budgets? Not only does this hurt local businesses, but property values are higher when there are "good schools" nearby. So the cost is shifted onto the businesses and individuals, when you "run government like a business." Because that's what businesses do.

Shifting costs from government onto the rest of us actually costs us more money than we save on taxes.

What Is Government's Job?

What is our government for? Is it to operate like a business and make a profit off of We the People? Or is it a mechanism for all of us to decide to get together to do things that make our lives better?

If government cuts corners, tries to do things "on the cheap" like a business, we end up with results that cost more than we would have paid to do something right. When government "saves money" by shifting costs onto individuals, economies of scale and negotiating power are lost and aggregate costs go up, like what has happened in our health care system. And government cutting corners often leads to bad, even cruel results in people's lives.

SNIP

There is often a good reason for those "big government" budgets.

Let's Put Taxes Back to Where They Were in the '50s.

Via Down with Tyranny:



We thrive only when we tax the living fuck out of the rich.

QOTD: Paying the Bills

S&P just downgraded Kentucky's bonds because we're refusing to tax the filthy rich and use the money to create a working economy instead of a feudal one.

Undercover Blue at Hullabaloo:

We seem prepared to strip America to the walls looking for places to cut pennies before we'll own up to our responsibility and tax ourselves for what we get and to maintain it. Highways, water systems, good schools, endless wars. We expect them. We demand them. We just refuse to pay for them, and then blame the deficits on the poor. Or else on waste, fraud, and abuse, the inexhaustible zero-point energy of conservative pseudo-economics.

Or to clean up after ourselves. Barack Obama is in Alaska this week talking about climate change and the need to do just that:

I have come here today, as the leader of the world’s largest economy and its second-largest emitter, to say that the United States recognizes our role in creating the problem, and we embrace our responsibility to help solve it.

Don't hold your breath waiting for the personal responsibility crowd to accept any.

Only Government Spending Will Save Your Middle-Class Ass

Why can't you live on what you make any more?  Austerity, which transfers trillions of your tax dollars every year up to billionaire motherfuckers like donald trump instead of spending it on teachers and janitors and mental health counselors and firefighters and home health aids.

Kevin Drum:

I don't really have any good hook for posting this chart, but it's one of the most important ones you'll ever see. It's from the Wall Street Journal and it shows total government spending (state + local + federal) during the recession and its aftermath:

For about a year following the Obama stimulus, total spending was a bit higher than average for recession spending. But after that, spending fell steadily rather than rising, as it has after every previous recession. The result: a sluggish recovery, persistent long-term unemployment, and anemic wage growth.

Instead of responding to a historically bad recession with a historically strong stimulus, we responded with the weakest stimulus ever. Government spending is now more than 25 percentage points lower than normal. If you want to know why the recovery has been so feeble and unsteady, this is it. Republican presidential candidates, please take note.

How to Get Back All the Money the Rich Stole

The next time somebody says that the government doesn't have the money to do something, print out this article, wrap it around a brick and then smack that somebody in the head with it.

There's plenty of money. Trillions of dollars in fact.  Blatantly stolen by the motherfucking rich, who are sitting on it and laughing their asses off at the rest of it.

Let's get it back.

David Sirota:

Roads are crumbling, bridges require repairs, schools need upgrades and public pension systems remain underfunded. How can states and cities find the money to address any of these problems? One way could be through their tax codes.

According to a new report, if the rich paid the same state and local tax rate as the middle class, states and cities would have hundreds of billions of dollars more a year in public revenue.

Last month, the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that the poorest 20 percent of households pay on average more than twice the effective state and local tax rate (10.9 percent) as the richest 1 percent of taxpayers (5.4 percent).

That preceded the new report from the left-leaning groups Good Jobs First and the Keystone Research Center which finds that if tax laws were changed to compel the highest income earners to pay the same rate as everyone else, states and localities would rake in up to $128 billion a year in new revenue. If just the top 1 percent of earners were compelled to pay the typical middle-class tax rate, the report says the change would raise more than $68 billion in new annual revenues.

Join Kentuckians for the Commonwealth on Economic Justice Day at the Capitol. Find your legislators and ask them why Kentucky taxes working people more than the lazy rich (in Kentucky, poors pay 12 percent in state taxes; the rich pay 6 percent.)

Join us on Wednesday for KFTC’s Economic Justice Lobby Day in Frankfort!
We’ll of course be lobbying on bills that have an impact – minimum wage, housing and renters’ rights, tax fairness and revenue that makes sense.

It’s also important that our legislators understand the impact of the wealth gap in Kentucky. So we’ll be doing a demonstration to lift up Kentucky’s income gap to legislators, reminding them of their important role in closing the gap with good economic policy that puts people first.

Meet in the Capitol Annex Room 171 starting at 8:30 a.m.! Wear black if you can, and bring something small that symbolizes what economic stability means to you. Register here to let us know you’re coming!

KFTC’s Economic Justice Lobby Day is Wednesday, March 4, and you can take action today, too!

HB 374 would close some corporate tax loopholes to raise about $66 million in revenue. This revenue would fund a 7.5% state Earned Income Tax Credit, which would help low-income working families become more financially secure. Rep. Jim Wayne is sponsoring the bill, and Speaker Greg Stumbo is the primary cosponsor.

The bill is getting called up in the Appropriations and Revenue Committee on Tuesday at 10 a.m. We need to make sure that the members of that committee have the opportunity to vote on the bill.

Take Action

Call the Legislative Message Line at 1-800-372-7181 (open 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.). Leave a message for your representative, the House Appropriations and Revenue Committee, and House leadership: “I’m another Kentuckian for tax fairness. Please vote yes on HB 374, and send it to the Senate.”

Learn more from the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy:

• Find a map that shows how your county would benefit from an EITC like the one in HB 374. It’d be great to add a sentence about how many people in your county would benefit from a state EITC in your message above!
  

• Find a policy brief about HB 374.

Lower Gas Tax = No Road Repair

Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.  Five cents less per gallon isn't going to pay for the thousands of dollars you'll spend repairing tire and undercarriage damage from unrepaired roads.

Jack Brammer at the Herald:

Kentucky motorists will pay less taxes for gas starting New Year's Day, but the change will mean fewer road improvements, state officials warned Wednesday.

Kentucky's tax on sales of gasoline, diesel and ethanol motor fuels will drop by 4.3 cents a gallon on Jan. 1, resulting in a loss to the Kentucky Road Fund of about $129 million on an annualized basis, according to the state Transportation Cabinet.

Kentucky's gas tax fluctuates with the average wholesale price of gas, which has dropped in recent months.

"The gas tax accounts for more than half of the revenue in the Kentucky Road Fund," state Transportation Secretary Mike Hancock said in a news release. "A loss of revenue is always concerning, but a revenue impact of this magnitude is crippling. It means less money for building, improving, maintaining and repairing our roads, streets and bridges."

A loss of $129 million would amount to about 6 percent of Kentucky's highway funding, which was forecast to collect $2.25 billion in the current fiscal year from all revenue sources, including state and federal motor-fuels taxes and a state usage tax on motor vehicles.

Somalia. That's what the anti-taxers want. A Galtian paradise with no taxes, no government, no infrastructure, just warlords rapiong and killing indiscriminately.

I say ship 'em all to their no-government paradise and let the rest of us get on with funding a government that makes life civilized.

"Every worker deserves to know that if you lose your job, your country will help you train for an even better one."

No, Mr. President, the problem is not worker skills; the problem is American companies shipping jobs overseas without consequences, and refusing to pay skilled workers what they are worth. Oh, and congressional repugs refusing to spend the trillions of dollars necessary to repair and rebuild national infrastructure



Full transcript here.

The Real Price of Inequality

Economic inequality doesn't just mean that some people are way richer than others.  It means that the bigger the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest, the more damage it causes to the economy and society, harming everyone.

It's already driven the U.S. into the ranks of the Third World.

Down With Tyranny:

Lately you've been hearing a few political leaders, particularly Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley, Brian Schatz and Bernie Sanders in the Senate and some of the Progressive Caucus members in the House, talking about steeply rising income inequality. They're talking about the kind of inequality that's part of vicious cycle that inevitably leads to oligarchy, plutocracy or outright fascism, in which a few families, through an accumulation of wealth and power, can dictate the laws and even the societal norms and control the mechanisms of enforcement to such an extent that they can virtually enslave an entire passive population.

It can't happen here? The manifestations are already undeniable. The greed and rapacity of the .01% has become so overbearing and their refusal to pay their fair share of taxes so debilitating that a UNICEF report I ran across this morning, a report that would have scandalized an empowered middle class anytime between the time Harry Truman was president until the beginning of the new normal under Ronald Reagan. The report goes a lot deeper than the shocking chart at top of the page which ranks 29 developed countries according to the overall well-being of their children. The 5 countries ranked at the very bottom include 4 of the poorest-- Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Greece-- plus the U.S., which is both one of the richest and one with the least economic equality. Those 5 countries, along with Italy, Portugal and Spain, have child poverty rates higher than 15%. The only countries that have allowed the child poverty gap to widen to more than 30%. are Bulgaria, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and, of course, the United States.

Some of the manifestations of America's rush to the bottom:

• The only developed countries with infant mortality rates higher than 6 per 1,000 births are Latvia, Romania, Slovakia and the United States.

• Only in Greece, Hungary, Portugal and the United States does the low birthweight rate exceed 8%.

• Only Canada, Greece and the United States have childhood obesity levels higher than 20%. The United States had the highest proportion of children overweight at both the beginning and end of the decade, reaching almost 30% by 2009/2010.

• Romania, the UK and the United States have the highest rates of teenage births (above 29 per 1,000).

• Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the United States are the only countries in which the homicide rate rises above 4 per 100,000. Almost all other countries fall into the range of 0 to 2.5 per 100,000.

Austerity Stinks

When you cut taxes so there's no money for infrastructure repair, you get shit. Literally.

Jim Warren at the Herald:

Heavy overnight rains caused another sewage overflow early Thursday morning at a collapsed sewer line off Man o' War Boulevard, Lexington officials said.

When I say "you," I mean us: the 99 percent. None of the parasite rich got shit in their yards this morning.

Cool Technology of the Century Is Here: Solar-Power Roads

They're going to have to fight the asphalt and concrete manufacturers on top of the entire fossil fuel industry, but this couple's invention might just become the climate-saving technology we need.

Emily Atkins at Think Progress:

Finding a way to replace regular, concrete roads with ones that could better serve a sustainable world has long been Scott and Julie Brusaw’s dream. Lately, the couple has been working on that dream so much that — at least on Tuesday — they didn’t even sleep.

“All of the publicity is keeping us hopping,” Julie said by e-mail on Wednesday afternoon, after Scott had fallen asleep. “I have over 6,800 unanswered emails in my inbox right now. Not counting all of the thousands I have responded to of course!”

The e-mails are about the couple’s Solar Roadways project, which aims to replace traditional asphalt and concrete roadways with solar panels that are covered with four-square-foot glass hexagon panels. The glass panels are designed not only to withstand the heaviest of trucks, but are also textured, encouraging tires to grip the surface and water to run off. The solar panels underneath generate energy from the sun, which can not only power nearby communities, but also the electric vehicles that drive above them. The power could also fuel embedded heating elements that would melt ice and snow, essentially making plows obsolete. To top it off, the power also lights up yellow LED lights instead of painted-on road lines, making night time driving safer.

Republicans Have Always Been Racist, Anti-Worker Motherfuckers

It's all about the money.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

This story suggests the very strong limitations of Republican labor policy and I want to once again push back on the idea that the Republican Party was a revolutionary political party. The vast majority of these railroad executives were Republicans. Many Republicans were perfectly fine with coerced labor so long as it wasn’t the actual conditions of slavery in the American South. That’s because for them, the problem with slavery was not the treatment of blacks, but the effect on whites, making them lazy, violent, and unconcerned with industrial progress. The abolitionists had different views and at least some of them were not horrible toward the Chinese, but they were always a pretty stark minority in the Republican Party. There was a revolutionary element in the Republican Party, yes, but their views of labor with the mainstream were more an alliance of convenience than a broad set of commonly held views. Far more common and growing ever more powerful in the years after the war were people like the Central Pacific executives, who would happily drive labor to the point of death for profit.

QOTD

David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

The world is certainly still a dangerous place, and military jobs are important. But so are the jobs that educate our children, repair our roads, serve the disadvantaged, reduce greenhouse emissions, and otherwise benefit the common good. Poverty, rampant inequality and climate change are all clearer and more present dangers than any non-nuclear military threat from China or Russia. Anyone who claims otherwise is an ignoramus or a con artist. Why is it OK for a Republican to vigorously defend every Keynesian taxpayer-funded military job, while trying to slash the jobs of teachers and railway workers so billionaires like Donald Sterling can pay less in taxes?

We Can't Have Nice Things Until We Tax the Rich

Because we sure as fuck ain't doin' it now.

David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

The United States has the third lowest effective tax rate in the developed world:

The U.S. was the third least taxed country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2011, the most recent year for which OECD has complete data.

Of all the OECD countries, which are essentially the countries the U.S. trades with and competes with, only Chile and Mexico collect less taxes as a percentage of their overall economy (as a percentage of gross domestic product, or GDP).

This sharply contradicts the widely held view among many members of Congress that taxes are already high enough in the U.S. and that any efforts to reduce the federal deficit should therefore take the form of cuts in government spending.

As the graph to the right illustrates, in 2011, the total (federal, state and local) tax revenue collected in the U.S. was equal to 24.0 percent of the U.S.’s GDP.

The total taxes collected by other OECD countries that year was equal to 34.0 percent of combined GDP of those countries.

Remember also that the top 1% of Americans have over 50% over the wealth, and that the top 10% have over 90% of the wealth.

America isn't broke. We could pay for decent infrastructure, schools and healthcare. But we have a system of legalized political bribery that would shame banana republics, ensuring that the very wealthy don't have to contribute more than a pittance toward the general welfare.

The Deficit is Shameful, Alright: Shamefully Small

So, the national deficit is at its lowest point in six years - down nearly half a Billion dollars - and at the same time millions of people out of work for more than a year are living on literally nothing.

This is not a coincidence.

Because when federal budget decisions are being made by vicious morons and plutocratic cock-suckers, you get a response to economic crisis that is exactly the opposite of what is needed.

The despicable "family budget" lie promulgated by the austerity hysterics is too stupid to address - the federal government's fiscal responsibilities are nothing like a family's - but if you insist on a kindergarten-level analogy, here it is:

You're going broke because you are paying far more in rent than you can afford. But if you bought a house even with nothing down, your monthly payments would be far less than your current rent, and you'd be building up equity instead of throwing money away on rent.

But because of that rent eating up your income, you don't have the cash to buy a house outright. You have to borrow the money. 

You borrowing to buy a house puts you in long-term debt, sure, but it gives you two big immediate financial boosts: your monthly housing costs drop substantially, and you now have an investment that grows in value with every mortgage payment. Borrowing money is thus the responsible thing to do.

Just as the federal government borrowing money and adding to the deficit in order to hire millions of unemployed people and pour trillions of dollars into a moribund economy is the responsible thing to do.

Lowering the deficit by cutting spending while 12 million people are out of work is not just grossly irresponsible, it is catastrophically fatal to economic growth.

And lowering the deficit by cutting spending on the very social safety net programs - unemployment insurance and food stamps - that are the only thing keeping unemployed people and their families alive  is a crime against humanity.

While President Obama's new budget proposal refrains from yet more snatching the food from the mouths of poor children, the elderly and the disabled, and actually proposes increased spending on infrastructure, it falls far short of the $10 Trillion in borrowing - at current negative interest rates - needed to reverse the effects of the last six years of economic depression.

And what would we spend $10 trillion dollars on?  Here's an idea:

Ryan Cooper begins his piece in the new Washington Monthly magazine with a straightforward pitch:

How would you like to get $2,000 in free money today, fresh off the government printing presses? And what if I told you it wouldn’t just be a nice windfall for you and your friends and family, but that we’d do it for all Americans on an ongoing basis, and that doing so would solve our crippling problem of mass unemployment?

Because what matters in an economy is that money gets spent. Who spends it and what they spend it on may matter politically, but from a purely economic perspective, spending money is what grows an economy in recession. Saving and hoarding money is what kills an economy in recession.

(Government spending causes inflation only in expanding economies - you know, the ones with lots of jobs and very few unemployed people.  Remember those?) 

Right now, austerity and Wall Street worship are funneling trillions of dollars to the obscenely wealthy, who ship it to overseas tax havens where it does the American economy active harm by not being in circulation.

The just solution is to take those stolen trillions away from the obscenely wealthy and give it back to the workers from whom it was stolen.

Short of that, however, the solution is to add $10 trillion (interest-free!) to the deficit and boost the economy by giving the money to people who will spend it right away, right here at home.

As Ed Kilgore wrote:

... since the current budget is a political document more than it is a fiscal blueprint, it would be nice if the administration stopped bragging about its budget-battle defeats and just made the case for appropriately robust investments. Someday, it might help Democrats win a few more (elections.)