Trickle Down Reaganomics

I'm always surprised that tax cuts for wealthy corporations and individuals aren't more unpopular than they are, like "uprising" unpopular. But if/when the debate arises in our social and political discourse the ones defending these tax cuts have only one arrow in their quiver: Trickle down economics. The unfortunate reality is that the only thing that seems to trickle down from above is this kind of bull shit. The false premise behind this theory is that wealthy people will spend more of their money if they don't have to pay so much to the IRS. If you replace the word "wealthy" with the word "poor" the statement is demonstrably true. Poor people love to shop, even if it's for basic necessities and not the fun stuff like cars and high def flat screen televisions. Rich people already have everything they need and most of everything they could ever want, but they do want more money even if they'll never feasibly need it.

Most people around the world do not consider their "worth", most people don't even have a savings account. For the upper class of this aristocratic planet there is no end to the status symbols and trophy possessions they can acquire, but with money they actually have a numeric system for their wealth and power. The wealthy want something most people have never dreamed of, they want to be on the Forbes list of the 400 richest people in America. They have a pile of money and they are carefully grooming and growing it, never satisfied with being mere millionaires. There is an art to growing your net worth and a major part of the skill required is eliminating leaks and holes where their money slips away. Money does not trickle down the social ladder, it goes specifically where it is needed to maintain and grow the power of the rich. And the more money they add to their net worth, the less there is in circulation for the people who need it for basic survival.

Of course "trickle down" is meant as a metaphor, nobody actually believes money is a liquid subject to gravity. So let's follow this metaphor to discover (or uncover) the mentality of it. What sorts of life forms live off of the water that trickles down to them? Crustaceans? Rats? Insects? What is America, a castle and most of us live in the dungeon? And where is the money? Shouldn't it just be raining money outside with no obligation, no strings attached? Many people have found similar fault with the word "trickle" but what about the word "down?" Are the rich exposing their true colors by putting themselves above the rest of us? I happen to believe that the rich are beneath the poor, or as Jesus called us: The Meek. And if you rejigger "trickle down economics" it can actually make a lot of sense. Money does trickle down from the workers who actually earn it to the bottom feeders who "own" everything.

Contrary to Orwellian belief, the rich do not have more because they work harder. Those who work the hardest have the least and those who work the least have the most. It's a simple fact that no person can become a millionaire on an hourly wage, a lifetime is not long enough even with double over time. The wealthy are literally (not metaphorically or hyperbolically) parasites on the planetary population of hard working souls, and when a host is asked to live off of what trickles down from a parasite the host is near death. "But wait" you say "The rich are the ones who give us jobs!" The rich do not take their personal wealth and put it into creating jobs, they invest it in limited liability corporations who move jobs overseas to maximize profits. And middle class business owners don't put their private wealth into the payroll system either, they rely almost exclusively on credit from banks to pay workers. The banks took our 700 Billion dollar bailout on the promise that they would use it to extend credit for this purpose, it's too bad we didn't get it in writing.

So how is this connected to our current situation? Well we may be rid of Bush but we still have the Bush tax cuts, the most blatant giveaway to the wealthy in my lifetime. And now we have several states following the union busting class warfare of recently erected governor of Wisconsin, Scott (The Imperial) Walker. Scott Walker walked into a budget due for a surplus and immediately gave corporations over 100 million dollars in tax breaks to encourage them to come to the state. He then demanded the money from workers and pushed for the quick passage of a bill that would take away unions collective bargaining rights effectively destroying the unions. So we may not be hearing about trickle down economics specifically, but we are hearing the part about the wealthy corporations being the giver of jobs, when in fact they take them away at every opportunity. So the supporters of Scott Walker are claiming that the unions are responsible for chasing away the corporations and compelling them to move jobs to China where the people aren't overpaid and under worked.

The wealthy calling the unions over paid and under worked is the height of absurdity, irony, and of course, classic republican hypocrisy.

Class War Criminals

The concept of a class war is somehow omnipresent and yet not there, a reference to nowhere. We hear about it once in a while usually when right wing conservatives are commenting on union activity in the news. On a rare occasion you may hear the opposing version when corporate friendly union busting politicians are attacking the hard won rights of the workers. But we are now entering a heightened stage of this mystical, metaphoric war in which both sides will be fighting for their very existence. Though we've never heard the term "class war" in most history classes, it's somehow more important, more prevalent, and more instructive in our current world of multinational corporate power than any military war in the history of the planet. In a way it's also the longest running war when you begin to see the consistent thread of aristocracy through the bloody legacy of empires from roman to american. Maybe it's time we include a history of class in history class, to teach about the class war on par with WWII.

Clearly the most notable difference between a military war and the class war is the role of nations, or the seeming insignificance of their roles. Wars are most often visited from one nation upon another, both with massive resources to draw from. When a nation wages a war it is overwhelmingly the poor to middle class (or bottom half) who put their actual bodies on the lines in the ultimate sacrifice. But this is not how class war works because the wealthy simply do not fight, and when they do join the military they are rarely if ever in harms way and historically enter the ranks at officer levels. Wealthy people have too much to live for, they cannot be expected to fight in infantry positions and therefore their numbers are severely low, especially when compared to the middle to lower classes who make up the bulk of fighting forces around the globe. Imagine if the class war were waged in the same military manner as WWI and II, the odds would be overwhelmingly in the favor of the poor. The rich and powerful upper 10% of the world population are not dumb enough to challenge the bottom 90% militarily. On the contrary, they're smart enough to get the bottom to do virtually all of the bidding for the top for a sliver of the reward.

In this very real war for the power and proprietary rights to the worlds resources, Fox news (or Faux news) is the pillar of propaganda for the rich and powerful, like the Koch brothers (pronounced "Coke") who have together bank rolled the entire tea party phenomena and all of it's puppet political candidates and campaigns. These billionaire cowboys have always been manipulating our so called democracy, but since the supreme courts handy work turned our corporations into "people" in a plot copy and pasted right from the script of Frankenstein, they can shop for the election results they want the same way they bid for fine art at Christie's in Rockefeller center. And wherever the Koch bros want them, there is Faux News repeating ad nauseum the talking points the wealthy corporate interests program them to say. Fox and all of the tea party candidates are little more than billion dollar Koch whores. There has never been a clearer demonstration of the corrosive effects of capitalism on democracy. The cohesion between Fox news and the republican party is seamless, and the claim of "fair and balanced" is designed to convince weak minded people that the far right is the center, effectively eliminating the left in a feat of overt Orwellian mind control.

There is no question that money makes a difference in elections, the only point that could be debated is exactly how much of a difference it makes in each individual election. And there is no doubt where the majority of money is coming from and where it goes thanks to many organizations tracking large campaign contributions from corporations and wealthy individuals. The average american doesn't contribute financially to political campaigns, most don't even bother to vote in midterm elections. So it's simple to conclude that the difference that money makes is overwhelmingly in the favor of the wealthy corporations and individuals who pitch the most into the pot. The one real variable is the significant sector of the poor who vote republican, but those numbers have been historically lower than the poor to middle class who vote for democrats. So for the sake of argument, let's be conservative and say that without any campaign contributions the races would be close, within a 5-10% margin. The difference that money makes only needs to be from 11-15% to ensure a republican victory at the polls. The reason democrats still win however is that without the extra money much fewer people would vote republican and that 11-15% difference just isn't enough.

In the state of Wisconsin there is a powerful, peaceful, peoples' uprising going on (as of this writing) over the recently "elected" republican governor Scott walkers' overt union busting tactics reminiscent of pre-FDR america. Walker has taken the gloves off making it easy to rip the mask off of the class war that is usually so subtle in it's ferocious appetite for destruction. He came into the drivers seat of a state that was well within budget and on track to have a surplus and declaring the state "open for business" (or "for sale") he immediately gave away over one hundred million dollars in corporate tax breaks putting the state into deficit. In the same stroke and without batting an eyelash he demanded that public workers make the sacrifices to pay for the hole in the budget, AND that their unions give up collective bargaining rights, the backbone of union power. Asking unions to give up their collective bargaining rights is like asking corporations to give up their limited liability status. When a somewhat weak union response came back to say "We'll make the sacrifices of our hard earned rights, but we won't give up our right to collective bargaining." Walker was uncompromising, unions must go so corporations could feel safe to call Wisconsin home. Walker beat his democrat rival by a mere 5%, this governor was purchased almost exclusively by the Koch bros for the purpose of destroying the unions and now his work has begun.

This is Class warfare union busting at it's finest, or worst, but one thing is certain, It's on. In the words of Florance Reese's classic union song it's time for everyone in the world to ask themselves deep down "Which side are you on?" The Koch bros and their cabal of Koch head republicans are watching this battle for Madison very closely, if Scott (The Imperial) Walker can destroy unions in their long time stronghold of Wisconsin, they are going to do it everywhere until there is nothing left for working people in this world. It's not as if they say amongst themselves "Lets destroy most unions, but leave a few here and there." they want them all dead, much more than they care to seek and destroy any terrorist hiding in a cave somewhere. And they argue somewhat effectively that our unions are driving jobs out of the nation, as if union members voted to have the factories moved overseas. The only reason the factories go where people won't defend themselves is because their unscrupulous owners want to exploit labor for their own disproportionate gains. Madison may not be Tunisia, but america is not the middle east, I see in Madison, Wisconsin a spark that can begin to resolve thousands of years of inequities in a mass global uprising of the people, by the people, and for the people.

If the unions must be sacrificed so must the system that justifies their existence.