A Billionaires' Coup in the US

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/23-6

There are two ways of cutting a deficit: raising taxes or reducing spending. Raising taxes means taking money from the rich. Cutting spending means taking money from the poor. Not in all cases of course: some taxation is regressive; some state spending takes money from ordinary citizens and gives it to banks, arms companies, oil barons and farmers. But in most cases the state transfers wealth from rich to poor, while tax cuts shift it from poor to rich. <(Illustration by Daniel Pudles)>

So the rich, in a nominal democracy, have a struggle on their hands. Somehow they must persuade the other 99% to vote against their own interests: to shrink the state, supporting spending cuts rather than tax rises. In the US they appear to be succeeding.

Partly as a result of the Bush tax cuts of 2001, 2003 and 2005 (shamefully extended by Barack Obama), taxation of the wealthy, in Obama's words, "is at its lowest level in half a century". The consequence of such regressive policies is a level of inequality unknown in other developed nations. As the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz points out, in the past 10 years the income of the top 1% has risen by 18%, while that of blue-collar male workers has fallen by 12%.

The deal being thrashed out in Congress as this article goes to press seeks only to cut state spending. As the former Republican senator Alan Simpson says: "The little guy is going to be cremated." That means more economic decline, which means a bigger deficit. It's insane. But how did it happen?

More at the link --

[TBF]

1. I believe it was during Reagan that the republican party jumped on "god and family values"

that resonated with folks and it has been very successful for them. Obviously a marketing technique to obscure the fact that they are stealing money hand over fist, but it has grown to become a lifestyle choice. I see it down here in Texas much more clearly than I ever did living in the North. I'm not sure how to combat that and get folks to focus on economics.

[WhiteTara]

2. Reagan jumped right on the 2 Santa Claus strategy

and the rest is history.

[patrice]

9. Re "lifestyle CHOICE" - All of us need to talk about how inertia CAUSES us to "think" & "choose"

what we think we think and how we choose what we choose. Believe me advertising and media have the nuts and bolts, the engineering, of these questions ALL doped out.

We need to try to understand for ourselves HOW we think and HOW we choose, so that we can cultivate our own processes better and, thus, defend ourselves from in-authentic inertia.

Voice of experience, here.

I think one way to become aware of the ways that we are limiting our evaluations of reality and ourselves and others is for systemic inertia, e.g. economic momentum or e.g. our environment, to change relatively suddenly . . . .

to have authentically DIFFERENT experiences.

Because change can overwhelm people, it'd be useful to have the experience of seeing the expectations, upon which previous evaluations and "choices" were based, turn out to be radically different, BEFORE, those experiences become sooooooooooooo radically different that those big differences alone limit responses to changes in our expectations.

I'm not sure that just role playing would accomplish the kinds of deeply analytic responses that would authenticate behavioral decisions, so maybe what we need to see is something that is more part of consensus-based ongoing evergreen efforts, stuff like Deming-esque processes: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/w_edwards_deming.html .

I think there are de facto experiences, which accomplish at least the opportunity to engage in these kinds of personal questions about thinking and choosing, found amongst those who are un-employed one or more times in recent years especially. But there are questions about the lack of certain kinds of direction in those situations: whether the change in their experiences are so radical that their personal thinking/choosing response options are not progressing as a result, but are in fact REGRESSING instead; and the extent to which systemic issues/inertia that is affecting them are not addressed, and may in fact even be protected, so whatever their personal responses are, they're limited by the fact that significant and powerful others, involved in the same systems (systems that are, to one degree or another, obsolete), are NOT engaging authentically in the same processing and in some cases are even protected for not doing so.

Though I am profoundly opposed to factors like, or similar to, Dominionism introduced as a coping mechanism in this milieu, I DO think authentic co-operative based models (for anything from "lifestyle" to professionalism) with their own internally developed learning/authentication processes would be a good place to begin. Although I'll admit my response to your question is biased by influence (amongst others) from the likes of W. Edwards Deming and Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed: http://books.google.com/books/about/Pedagogy_of_the_oppressed.html?id=xfFXFD414ioC

[begin_within]

3. The next tactic will be something like:

"Jesus said to quit focusing on riches and worldly possessions... so embrace your poverty as what Jesus wants for you..."

Or the catch-all phrase whenever anything bad happens: "It's God's will!"

[patrice]

10. bingo!!

:hi:

[xchrom]

4. Recommend

[midnight]

5. K&R

[SpiralHawk]

6. "Yay for us. Smirk" - Billionaire PuppetMasters (R)

"You suckers out there in Americaland just keep on paying for (smirk) and watching our corporate propaganda bilge on your teevees. Bwaaa ha ha ha. Paying for your own MindF*ckery. Bwaaaa ha ha ha ha ha. Smirk. Sneer."

- Billionaire PuppetMasters (R)

[Warpy]

7. They always do the wrong thing first

until we the people start to rise up and greatly inconvenience them with riots and strikes.

Then they very grudgingly enact reforms that they know will last only until the next crop of total suckers is born and grows up, ready to accept the swill of laissez-faire/mercantilism/supply side that they repackage as though it's new, different, and supremely moral.

And so it goes. This is going to get much, much worse before it ever has a chance of getting better.

[Zax2me]

8. Corp. tax rates must also be cut to increase incentives and the availability of investment capital

President Kennedy:
snip-For all these reasons, next year's tax bill should reduce personal as well as corporate income taxes, for those in the lower brackets, who are certain to spend their additional take-home pay, and for those in the middle and upper brackets, who can thereby be encouraged to undertake additional efforts and enabled to invest more capital.
The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrents to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system; and this administration pledged itself last summer to an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes to be enacted and become effective in 1963.
http://www.archive.org/details/JfkTheCaseForTaxCuts

[patrice]

11. The 30%+ brackets START at < $200K, which, relative to the top of those brackets, is not even the

same economic specie and, one could hypothesize, might even be LESS dependent upon the incomes/wealth ABOVE them, than the ones above them are, and, also, incidentally, therefore could be less DEPENDENT upon FOREIGN influence than those above them are . . .

. . . or something like that, anyway.