Community | July 29, 2011 | 6 comments

HOW THE RICH WIN EITHER WAY!!!: Richard Wolff: Debt Showdown is "Political Theater" Burdening Society's Most Vulnerable

source: http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/28/richard_wolff_debt_showdown_is_political

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PigFarmington
Probably the most insightful analysis of the current economic depression and political theater.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/28/richard_wolff_debt_showdown_is_political
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    Community,   Orwellian Nightmare,   Unexplained
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    Congress,  Poor,  Social Issues,  Debt Ceiling,  1 more
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6 comments // HOW THE RICH WIN EITHER WAY!!!: Richard Wolff: Debt Showdown is "Political Theater" Burdening Society's Most Vulnerable

  • COMMONSENSEFORCOMMONGOOD_COM
    • 0
      COMMONSENSEFORCOMMONGOOD_COM  

    • BINGO - ON THE HEAD!!!

      Everyone knows that there is sufficient legal standing for Obama to raise the debt ceiling unilaterally, and that there is no real crisis either way. Why, then, the great stage extravaganza?

      Does it occur to most that any reduction in public services, which the public pays for, is a back door tax increase on the poor & middle class, without a corresponding increase on the rich? Both sides in this debate seem entrenched on raising taxes on the common PEOPLE, overtly or covertly. Can this great theatrical production mean anything more than an attempt on the part of both parties to distract attention from what really is going on? Is this no more than a bait & switch, smoke & mirrors, nut shell game? "Drive them insane with inane back and forth, ups and downs, arguing, name calling, threats, and the commotion of a turkish bazaar, and they will become so fatigued and weary of hearing about nothing but it, that they will accept anything to be done with it, including accepting a backdoor tax increase!

      They are all traitors except Bernie Sanders and maybe Dennis Kucinich. Who other than those two have come out swinging and telling it 100% like it is? Watch your back Bernie, they may be sneaking up behind you to silence your lone voice in the hell that they have made Congress into. If the American PEOPLE accept this travesty, then they deserve to pay greater taxes and to get less for it, because that will mean the criminally militant corporations, banksters, and our legislators are right, that we are fat, lazy, couch potato air heads that don't deserve the promises which our forefathers bequeathed us.

    • 10 months ago
  • kvb1
    • +1
      kvb1  
    • Image

    • As Richard Wolff points out, most of the Democrats, and certainly the Democratic Party is really neo-liberal, RIPublican lite. The current political structure in this country is a failure. I posted a speech by TR made in 1912. He tells you what a Progressive is, and Democrats are not.

      http://current.com/community/93366397_who-is-a-progressive.htm

      RICHARD WOLFF: The most amazing thing to me is that we talk about fixing a government budget that’s in trouble, and we don’t talk about the revenue side in a serious way. That is an amazing thing. If you look at what happened to the American budget over the last 20 or 30 years, the culprit is obvious. We have dropped corporate taxes. We have dropped taxes on the rich.

      Let me give you a couple of examples to drive it home. If you go back to the 1940s, here’s what you discover, that the federal government got 50 percent more money year after year from corporations than it did from individuals. For every dollar that individuals paid in income tax, corporations paid $1.50. If you compare that to today, here are the numbers. For every dollar that individuals pay to the federal government, corporations pay 25 cents. That is a dramatic change that has no parallel in the rest of our tax code.

      Another example. In the ’50s and ’60s, the top bracket, the income tax rate that the richest people had to pay, for example the ’50s and ’60s, it was 91 percent. Every dollar over $100,000 that a rich person earned, he or she had to give 91 cents to Washington and kept nine. And the rationale for that was, we had come out of a Great Depression, we had come out of a great war, we had to rebuild our society, we were in a crisis, and the rich had the capacity to pay, and they ought to pay. Republicans voted for that. Democrats voted for that. What do we have today? Ninety-one percent? No. The top rate for rich people today, 35 percent. Again, nobody else in this society—not the middle, not the poor—have had anything like this consequence.

      So, over the last 30, 40 years, a shift from corporate income tax to individual income tax, and among individuals, from the rich to everybody else. To deal with our budget problem without discussing that, putting that front and center, making that part of the story, that’s just a service to the rich and the corporations. There’s no polite way to say otherwise. And there’s something shameful about keeping all of that away and focusing on how we’re going to take out our budget problems by cutting back benefits to old people, to people who have medical needs. There’s something bizarre, and the world sees that, in a society that has done what it has done and now proposes to fix it on the backs of the majority.

      The Republicans say it, and President Obama has said it repeatedly. He is going to provide incentives, he said, for years now. He is going to provide inducements and support for the private sector to put people back to work. We have a 9.2 percent unemployment rate. That’s what it’s been for the last two years. That policy has not worked. If corporations were going to do what the President gave them incentives to do, they would have done it. They’re not doing it. There’s no sign they’re going to do it. You have to face: that policy didn’t work.

      What’s the alternative? Well, we don’t have to look far. Roosevelt, in the 1930s, the last time we faced this kind of situation, went on the radio in 1933 and 1934, and he gave speeches. And in those speeches, he said the following: if the private sector either cannot or will not provide work for millions of our citizens, ready, able and willing to work, then the government has to do it. And between 1934 and 1941, the federal government created and filled 11 million jobs.

      The most amazing thing in the United States is not that we are not doing it. The most amazing thing is, there’s no bill to do it, there’s no discussion to do it. The president of the country never refers to it, keeps telling us—and the Republicans do the same—that the private sector is where we should focus our expectations. The private sector has answered: "We are not going to hire people here. We’re either going to hire no one, because we don’t like the way the economy looks, or we’re going to hire people in other countries, because they pay lower wages there." That’s a response of the private sector taking care of itself. It’s not a responsible way to run a society.

    • 10 months ago
  • oldbanjo
  • PoliticalAmazon
    • +1
      PoliticalAmazon  

    • In addition, because of the "political theater" being played out in D.C., especially when added to the many previous political theaters played out during the Obama administration (sorry, I'm a Democrat, but I just don't remember this kind of bullshit going on during the Bush Jr administration), the American people are suffering the real, definable, and irreplaceable losses of a Congress whose working hours (pitifully few to start with) on this posturing and posing bullshit.

      Think of what these days, weeks, months of wasted Congressional and presidential time could have done to solve our nation's problems. They should be working on JOBS! on getting us out of the 4 wars we are now involved in, on strengthening our southern international border, dealing with the massive influx of tar heroin and cocaine from Latin America, etc., etc., etc.

      They ALL should be fired for that alone. Would you keep a group of people working for you if they spent 100% of their time for months and months in arguing with each other?

    • 10 months ago
  • PoliticalAmazon
    • +2
      PoliticalAmazon  

    • Wonderful video. I have to follow Richard Wolff more closely. I keep saying I will, but there's always some donnybrook to deal with that gets in the way.

      I also liked Juan Gonzalez' statements, like this one:

      JUAN GONZALEZ: "But when you say, that the Republicans decided to make theater out of it, it seems to me that the Democrats also have participated in the process by making this seem like it’s—Armageddon will occur unless we get this done by August 2nd. And in essence, at times it seems almost like the Obama administration is seeking this deadline to start moving in a more centrist direction economically that it has wanted to do, but has been absent the type of crisis that it would be able to convince the American public that it needs to do."

      -------------------

      I also totally agree with this statement from Wolff:

      RICHARD WOLFF: "There are certainly signs of that. And they’re very troubling to many of us who are economists, right, left and center, because basically, the Democrats have said, 'We will do massive cuts. They just won’t be as massive as the Republicans want.' And then they will appeal to the American people in the hope that Americans will choose the lesser evil: the Democrats who won’t cut so terribly compared to the Republicans."

      -------------------------

      I want to comment about this Wolff statement:

      RICHARD WOLFF: "And the Democrats are saying, 'Well, we’re not so bad. We’re going to tax the rich, just a little, and the corporations a little less. And that’s something the Republicans won’t do. And we will protect your Social Security, at least more than...' "

      As a very wise poster at Current posted, "When you settle for the lesser of two evils, you are still choosing evil."

      ----------------------

      Finally, the most important part of what is missing in this President-Congress-lobbyist-fueled debacle is this:

      President Obama, in a recent speech, said he has a "balanced approach." Both Boehner and Obama say they desperately want to solve this impasse.

      However, BOTH fail to include the one thing that would immediately bring their supporters behind them: defunding the 4 wars we are now involved in, two of which were Obama's doing.

      If Obama was really interested in a "bipartisan" approach to politics, he would defund the wars, because that is something that the majority of American people would unite behind him on.

    • 10 months ago
  • PigFarmington
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