When the United States of America was still nothing more than a group of colonies controlled by the British Empire, the Crown did all that it could to make sure that it stood above the common colonists. Financially speaking, taxes were placed upon the colonists by the British in order to make sure that the rich stayed rich and the poor stayed poor. The British used no common sense in how they ruled their subjects. They simply thought,
“How can we make more money and maintain dominance over society?”
Fast forward nearly twelve score and we have the exact same situation going on. The Republicans in the United States don’t care about the middle class, much less the lower class. Republicans want to privatize everything so the elite in the United States can prosper even more. With everything from healthcare to Social Security to the military, the Republicans have at least tried to privatize every industry in the United States with only the goal of making a profit for themselves.
The greed of the Republicans has already cost us dearly. In the last 50 years, with the terrible policies of Ronald Reagan deregulating the banks and the economy, all the way to George W. Bush forcing us into a war and allowing prices of goods to skyrocket and salaries to stay still. The economy inflated due to the unintelligent policies of the Bush Administration, the economy went belly-up in 2008.
Now as President Barack Obama and the Democratic party are working hard day in and day out, the Republicans are trying to blame the economic problems on Obama. Child Please! If it was not for Obama and the Democrats, the economy would still be in a deep recession; probably a depression, and the unemployment rate would be into the late teens.
Before the Republicans, who claim to be so intelligent, blindly cast stones at Obama, maybe they should pay attention to the measures Obama has passed and implemented. The economy is in as swift of an upward turn that it can be in, all thanks to the hard work of Obama who has had to deal with Republicans trying to block and filibuster all of his bills. And for anyone who hasn’t noticed, in Congress any member can propose a new law, and Republicans have yet to propose any law that would benefit the United States in any way. That is, unless the people of the United States want to return to the policies of the Bush Administration and see if the Republicans can break their own record and get the economy even lower than in 2008.
The United States federal and state governments will be facing an unprecedented tax shortfall in the years to come. Declining corporate profits, asset values, and skyrocketing unemployment will cause the tax base to fall flat. It will most likely become evident in April of this year and get progressively worse in the years to come.
The common sense solution would be for the federal and state governments to once and for all abandon wasteful programs and departments and dramatically cut down on government expenses. Unfortunately this will not in any way be the consensus among Congress and the Executive Branch. They will see no other way out than to drastically raise taxes as a matter of “urgency” and “in the nations interest”. This bureaucratic intervention will of course do nothing but stifle growth and progress and thus have an additional adverse effect on tax receipts that will leave government bureaucrats puzzled.
Meanwhile there is no indication that government expenses will fall. Even with the current, now completely obsolete, budget estimates for government expenses, the Federal deficit would develop as follows:
$850 billion for 2009
$1 trillion for 2010
$1.3 trillion for 2011
$1.7 trillion for 2012
These are very optimistic figures. It wouldn’t be surprising if actual figures turned out to be around double or triple those numbers, unless a true change in policy were to occur.
A true change would of course necessitate a complete, yet structured and well planned, abandonment of whole departments and government programs, including but not limited to Homeland Security, Education, Social Security, and Health and Human Services, along with a significant reduction of defense and military spending to sustainable levels around $100 billion per year.
This necessity has not reached the public in the slightest. Whoever utters it will be scorned as a neoliberal, callous, selfish miser who has nothing but his own interest in mind. It will take a complete collapse of this system in order for people to wake up to reality and listen.
People who are for a continuation of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy seem ignorant to the fact that despite the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, he created absolutly NO private sector jobs (composite) during this administration. Moreover, the tax breaks enjoyed by the wealthy over the past 10 years amounts for roughtly 7 billion dollars and would go a long way to reducing the huge national debt. So, it makes sense to continue the breaks right? WRONG! It’s the supply side vs. the middle class making the economy go and it’s been proven that the supply side DOES NOT, particularly when you’re outsourcing american jobs left and right. China owns our butts and it’s time to bring our industry home and employ american workers and pay decent wages. Republicans are for a low wage economy and Democrats for a living wage economy. End of story.