It's the Middle Class, Stupid!

[NightWatcher]

If we cannot afford to pay our credit card bill, the credit industry suffers.
If we cannot afford to pay our mortgage, the housing industry suffers.
If we cannot afford to buy a new car, the auto industry suffers.
If we cannot afford to pay our cable bill, the telecom industry suffers.
If we cannot afford to take a trip, the transportation industry suffers.

When the MIDDLE CLASS suffers, the world's markets suffer. When we lose our jobs, we stop paying our bills and also stop fueling the world's economy.
So, why do we want to give huge tax breaks to corporations and the rich?

Do they pay our credit card bills?
Do they pay our mortgages?
Do they buy new cars?
Do they pay the cable bills?
Do they go to Disney World

All of the trouble in the world markets, along with the fact that the current Presidential campaign has been going since the day after GWB was sworn in for a second term, tells me that NEO_CONSERVATISM_DOESNT_WORK!!! (ie Voodoo Economics and Trickle Down...)

[OhioChick]

1. You Got It!

K&R
:kick:

[ananda]

2. Yeah, the poor and working classes simply do not exist.

Smirk.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

3. K & R. Spot On!

:applause:

:kick:

MKJ

[Hestia]

4. Democracy Now has a fantastic interview about where funds are actually going...

Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/1...iest_americans

*
Economic figures show that in 2005, the wealthiest 0.1 percent of the country’s population had nearly as much income as all 150 million Americans who make up the lower economic half of the country. Of each dollar people earned in 2005, the top ten percent got 48.5 cents, the highest percentage since 1929, just before the Great Depression.
*
The new owners of the Washington Nationals baseball team in Washington, D.C., paid $450 million for the team. But, in fact, they got the team for free, because the subsidy they’re getting for the new stadium is worth $611 million. We actually paid these people to buy the team.


Now, in this country right now, we are spending $2 billion a year subsidizing the big four sports: baseball, basketball, football and hockey. It accounts for all of the profits of that industry and more. Now, there may be individual teams that make money, but the industry as a whole is not profitable. And that’s astonishing because the big four leagues are exempt from the laws of competition. By the way, irony is not dead, because here are people who are in the business of competition on the field who are exempted by law from the rules of economic competition.


If you go to England and you want to start a soccer team, they have to let you join the soccer league. There are thirteen commercial soccer teams in the London area. New York City, the biggest city in the country, there are two baseball teams, because there’s no free entry into the market. In Los Angeles, there’s no football team. And the owners use this power to prevent others from owning teams, to prevent municipal governments from owning teams, to prevent nonprofits from owning teams, to extract money from the taxpayers to build them new stadiums.

At the same time that we’re doing this, we are starving our public parks for money. And I show in Free Lunch how the rise of urban gangs and now suburban gangs is connected to this. We used to have all sorts of programs in this country after World War II for young men and young women on Saturdays and during the summer and school holidays, where even if you didn’t have any money—didn’t matter that your parents didn’t have any money, because—and I know this because I did it as a child—you could go to any one of a half-dozen different places, and there were organized activities to keep you out of trouble. After all, idle hands are the devil’s workshop is not exactly a radical new idea. Well, we’ve cut and cut and cut those programs to fund two different subsidies: one to sports teams’ owners, one that goes to Tyco, General Electric, Honeywell and some other big companies. And, lo and behold, we’ve had a big rise in urban violence because of the vacuum being filled by young people who no longer have these organized activities.

and much much more at the link...

[midnight]

5. This is so true. But the multicorporations have changed the

game....They have become locusts flying to where the resources are, and bleeding them dry. When the resources are no longer there they fly off. America has become unvaluable. Why? It seems we have been sold off. For sure our debt is owned by China. Our Constitution that use to protect our rights, our being laughed about. The law doesn't matter....Those we elected to investigate this say it doesn't matter. There is only one Candidate that consistantly says this matters, and most Americans will never hear why. Some who do hear the message discount it because this candidate voted for the war in Iraq.