UTMB: America’s billionaire welfare queens: the high cost of the wealthy on the rest of us. For anyone who wonders why the deficit is so large and why, at the same time, income inequality between the super-wealthy and the rest of us is at a record high, consider the various ways which the Republican Party, starting with Ronald Reagan, has gamed the system to funnel our incomes directly into the bank accounts of the one-percent. THANK RONALD REAGAN AND HIS TRICKLE-DOWN REAGANOMICS. GOP tax bonus for the rich ignores failure of Reaganomics---REAGAN / JULY 1981: This represents $750 million in tax cuts over the next five years. And this is only the beginning. RACHEL MADDOW: And thus was born a new economic philosophy Reaganomics, cutting government spending, cutting regulation and cutting taxes--cutting taxes especially for the richest Americans. President Reagans tax plan cut the top tax rate for the wealthiest Americans from 70 percent to 50 percent. Why cut taxes so dramatically for the richest of the rich in the middle of a recession? [...] Trickle-down economics. The idea of trickle-down economics is basically this: you cut tax rates for the richest Americans, therefore the richest Americans have more. They have more money in their pockets, therefore they have more money to spend and invest. And as they spend and invest, the effect of rich peoples good fortune and rich people spending trickles down to everybody else in the economy. A rising tide lifts all boats, right? That was the idea. That was the plan. That did not happen. Reaganomics was a spectacular success in some ways. It was a spectacular success for the richest Americans in the country who benefited the most from President Reagans historic debt- exploding, budget-busting tax cuts. In 1980, the top one percent of Americans earned wages about $110,000 a year. By 1990, after about 10 years of Reaganomics, the top one percent had seen their wages rise by 80 percent. Trickle-down economics, though, right? Whats good for the rich is good for all of us, right? Not quite. Heres the average wages in the rest of the country in 1980 and here is what happened for the rest of the country after about 10 years of Reaganomics flat. A whopping three percent rise in wages in 10 years. The richest people see their fortunes go up like the Matterhorn. Everybody else, nothing. This is what family income growth looked like during the 1980s: THEN THANK RONALD REAGAN FOR HIS GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM NOT THE SOLUTION message, which the tea party carries on today: The Abject Failure of Reaganomics. Reagan sold Americans on his core vision: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Through his personal magnetism, Reagan then turned taxes into a third rail of American politics...“[Reagan] convinced many voters that the government’s only important roles were funding the military and cutting taxes.” Yet, instead of guiding the country into a bright new day of economic vitality, Reagan’s approach accelerated a de-industrialization of the United States and a slump in the growth of American jobs, down to 20 percent during the 1980s. The percentage job increase for the 1990s stayed at 20 percent, although job growth did pick up later in the decade under President Clinton, who raised taxes and moderated some of Reagan’s approaches while still pushing “free trade” agreements and deregulation. Hard-line Reaganomics returned with a vengeance under George W. Bush – more tax cuts, more faith in “free trade,” more deregulation – and the Great American Job Engine finally started grinding to a halt. Zero percent increase. The Great American Middle Class was on life-support. Through its ideological media and think tanks
Posted on: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 16:43:18 +0000
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