I am listening to Chris Matthews and his guests on MSNBC. This is THE left-liberal network, right? Fox’s counterpoint. I expect it to differ from the standard anti-tax, free market ideology which has taken over most of public opinion.
Today, they are discussing the recent stock market decline, including the Dow’s 513 point drop on August 4. And of course, bemoaning America’s economic troubles.
What is one to do? Matthews asks his expert guests. They all agree that it’s terrible that Obama is stymied at every turn by the Tea Party and by radical Republicans. What can be done?
The experts give their solution. And you know what it is?
Cut taxes! Corporate taxes, to be sure, counterbalanced by closing loopholes, so that tax reform remains revenue-neutral. But still: this is the key recommendation of LEFT-LIBERAL thinkers on MSNBC! Cut taxes!
THAT’S IT?!?!
Here is their well-known and worn-out thinking: Corporate America has piled up $2.5 trillion in cash. Corporate America is very profitable, because it makes lots of money overseas - in China, Brazil, India, Russia, etc.
But they won’t spend money and create jobs in the US. Instead of hiring people, they lay people off, especially permanent employees with costly benefits, replacing them with machines, cheap temporary help and workers in India. So the private sector is not creating jobs. It is not reviving the economy.
Until last year, the government did revive the economy a little, with Obama’s stimulus and Bernanke’s “quantitative easing.” But that’s over. Now, there is not a chance in hell that the government will once again be permitted to stimulate the economy and save thousands of jobs, as it did when it saved the automobile industry. The Tea Party-dominated Republicans will make sure of that. Congress continues to increase the unemployment rate, (as it did in early August when it shut down the FAA).
So corporate America is not WILLING to create jobs, and the government is not PERMITTED to create jobs.
So the solution they propose is to make the already fabulously profitable corporations even more profitable, by reducing corporate taxes! They say that this will motivate them to start hiring again.
This is the solution advocated even on MSNBC, the left-liberal network and, I have to add: even subscribed to by Obama himself and his policy advisers!
What am I missing? As I see it, it’s clear that the corporations don’t want to spend their money on jobs and on investments. They want to sit on it instead.
In ancient Rome, this would have called for proscriptions. But I don’t advocate such a bloody solution. In civilized society, all that this calls for is TAXES.
Why is Keynes so utterly and totally out, and Adam Smith the only voice?
Why are there no calls for at least a mini-New Deal? For hiring 4 million Americans to fix our rotting bridges, roads and schools? And to do so without increasing the national debt, by RAISING taxes, not reducing them?
Today, even “liberals” see tax cuts as the solution to all our economic problems. It’s hopeless. We have lost our way.leave comment here
