I'm a Depression historian ... the tax bill is straight out of 1929
I'm a Depression historian ... the tax bill is straight out of 1929
Robert S. McElvaine
Washington: "There are two ideas of government," William Jennings Bryan declared in his 1896 "Cross of Gold" speech. "There are those who believe that if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them."
That was more than three decades before the collapse of the economy in 1929. The crash followed a decade of Republican control of the federal government during which trickle-down policies, including massive tax cuts for the rich, produced the greatest concentration of income in the accounts of the richest 0.01 percent at any time between World War I and 2007 (when trickle-down economics, tax cuts for the hyper-rich and deregulation again resulted in another economic collapse).
Yet the plain fact that the trickle-down approach has never worked leaves Republicans unfazed. The GOP has been singing from the Market-is-God hymnal for well over a century, telling us that deregulation, tax cuts for the rich, and the concentration of ever more wealth in the bloated accounts of the richest people will result in prosperity for the rest of us. The party is now trying to pass a scam that throws a few crumbs to the middle class (temporarily - millions of middle-class Americans will soon see a tax hike if the bill is enacted) while heaping benefits on the super-rich, multiplying the national debt and endangering the American economy.
In 1926, Calvin Coolidge's treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, one of the world's richest men, pushed through a massive tax cut that would substantially contribute to the causes of the Great Depression. Republican Senator George Norris of Nebraska said that Mellon himself would reap from the tax bill "a larger personal reduction [in taxes] than the aggregate of practically all the taxpayers in the state of Nebraska". The same is true now of Donald Trump, the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson and other fabulously rich people.
During the 1920s, Republicans almost literally worshiped business. "The business of America," Coolidge proclaimed, "is business." Coolidge also remarked that "the man who builds a factory builds a temple" and "the man who works there worships there". That faith in the Market as God has been the Republican religion ever since. A few months after he became president in 1981, Ronald Reagan praised Coolidge for cutting "taxes four times" and said "we had probably the greatest growth in prosperity that we've ever known." Reagan said nothing about what happened to "Coolidge Prosperity" a few months after he left office.
In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt called for "bold, persistent experimentation" and said: "It is common sense to take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something." The contrasting position of Republicans then and now is: Take the method and try it. If it fails, deny its failure and try it again. And again. And again.
When Bill Clinton proposed a modest increase in the top marginal tax rate in his 1993 budget, every Republican voted against it. Trickle-down economists proclaimed that it would lead to economic disaster. But the tax increase on the wealthy was followed by one of the greatest periods of prosperity in American history and resulted in a budget surplus. When the Republicans came back into power in 2001, the administration of George W. Bush pushed the opposite policies, which had invariably produced calamity in the past. Predictably, that happened again in 2008.
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http://www.smh.com.au/world/im-a-depression-historian--the-tax-bill-is-straight-out-of-1929-20171201-gzwxep.html
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Trump's America - meet the Great Depression Part II.
You made this happen and you brought it on all of us by voting for this asshole. You voted for Republicans in the House and Senate, even though they've pledged to take our money and give it to the extremely wealthy people who DON'T deserve it - they just don't want us to have it.
The Reagan conservatives never believed in trickle down economics, but they had to call it something that would be acceptable to the media and the liberals. David Stockman, Reagan's economic advisor who invented the term, wrote a book and said they were laughing behind closed doors, thinking that nobody would ever believe it. It was just PR spin and nothing else, to justify the huge transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in the 1980's.
Of course that's why we have so many one-percenters now, they all got extremely wealthy during the Reagan years. They're extremely right-wing as well because, ... greed.
About 10 years ago (I've searched but can't seem to find the study) a study came out showing that when the top tax rate drops below 50%, the economy tends to faulter and even crash. Thom Hartmann use to quote it a lot.
We can expect an economic crash in 4 years or less because of this bill. It can take longer but because so much wealth is being hoarded by the uber rich right now, The crash will come sooner.
Think about it. This tax bill takes money out of the government and gives it to people who are already hoarding money. Most of the money was going to the poor and was being circulated throughout the economy. Now these people who are already hoarding, are getting more money to HOARD. You are basically removing $1 trillion+ wealth that has been circulating throughout the economy and putting it aside in tax havens and off shore accounts. It's bound to impact the economy in a negative way.
Here's hoping you have your money in a safe place. The banks are already looking at deposits as investments to pull from when they are failing. I'm thinking about under my matress.
