The problem with the far right is, they want all of the rights without any of the responsibilities that are expected of good citizens. And this column will prove that statement.
I know, let's have some fun. Let's talk about three things that right-wingers can't seem to discuss without turning themselves into blithering idiots and demonstrating the above adage as true. Those three things are taxes, deficits and government spending. Those are their favorite subjects, and they talk about them ad nauseum. But they really don’t know what they’re talking about.
The most amazing thing about of any right-winger’s discussion of these subjects is the absolute certainty they have that their position is the correct one, and they’re seemingly automatic declaration that they, and they alone are "fiscally responsible." That’s the term that they use to describe themselves, and it makes me chuckle every time. Look back in history, if you want a clue. Go look it up; The Great Depression, the 1982 Recession and the Great Recession that we are currently living through all have Republican fingerprints all over them. And the debt that they suddenly seem so concerned about? Well, we’ll get to that.
The sad fact is, their position on these issue is not right, and the idea that the far right can be considered “fiscally responsible” is absolutely laughable. And I’ll show you exactly why, so that the next time one of them starts whining about any of the three, you can laugh at them and tell everyone else why you’re laughing.
Let’s start with taxes.
Taxes are a fact of life, folks. Look around you; do you think those roads build and pave themselves? Do you think the schools that you, your spouse, you kids and most of your friends and co-workers attended just magically appeared? When your house or business catches fire, do you think leprechauns bring the equipment and fight the fire? Building a society costs money, and we all benefit from it, so we all have to pay our fair share. We all grumble and piss and moan when we have to write a check to the IRS (yes, even me), but without that money, our society wouldn’t be what it, well, was before the righties took over and trashed it.
The problem with the right and their discussion of taxes is summed up in their absurd declaration that “all taxes are theft.” They also like to use the term “confiscation” when it comes to taxes. But if you want to hear a right winger bitch, listen to him whine when he runs over a pothole. he doesn’t blame leprechauns, he blames the government. And he is probably oblivious to the reality that it very well could be all of those politicians he supported that promised to lower his taxes that are to blame for not filling in the pothole.
Like I said; the far right wants all the benefits that tax money brings, without actually paying taxes themselves. They want to live in a free country, where they can burn as much gasoline as they like driving the biggest, emptiest vehicle hundreds of miles a day to absolutely nowhere, but they don’t want to pay the actual cost of doing so. They want to use the roads, but not pay for them, and they want to use government services without having to pay for them. In fact, as much as they cry and whine about welfare, red states are the greatest welfare recipients in the country.
And that’s not just rhetoric, folks. Take a look at the top 15 states when it comes to share of federal taxes they receive. In other words, for every dollar the state pays in, they receive this much back. This chart comes from The Tax Foundation, which isn’t exactly a liberal outfit, as I’ve noted before. These numbers are for Fiscal Year 2005:
| New Mexico | $2.03 |
| Mississippi | $2.02 |
| Alaska | $1.84 |
| Louisiana | $1.78 |
| West Virginia | $1.76 |
| North Dakota | $1.68 |
| Alabama | $1.66 |
| South Dakota | $1.53 |
| Kentucky | $1.51 |
| Virginia | $1.51 |
| Montana | $1.47 |
| Hawaii | $1.44 |
| Maine | $1.41 |
| Arkansas | $1.41 |
| Oklahoma | $1.36 |
Notice something? You know, like the domination of red states in the mix? Virginia is there in part because of the federal government’s presence in the DC area, and Hawaii has a huge military presence, relevant to the size of the country. And a couple of the states, like Maine and West Virginia, are somewhat purplish. But the fact is, the states with the reddest, most right wing politicians are the ones most likely to be heavily subsidized by those living in blue states, who tend to whine less about taxes.
Put simply, while their taxes are low, the cost of providing services is still just as high as it is everywhere else. So, they are essentially being subsidized by taxpayers who are less likely to bitch about their taxes.
And lest you think I’m exaggerating, look at the bottom 15 states for a clue:
| Oregon | $0.93 |
| Michigan | $0.92 |
| Washington | $0.88 |
| Wisconsin | $0.86 |
| Massachusetts | $0.82 |
| Colorado | $0.81 |
| New York | $0.79 |
| California | $0.78 |
| Delaware | $0.77 |
| Illinois | $0.75 |
| Minnesota | $0.72 |
| New Hampshire | $0.71 |
| Connecticut | $0.69 |
| Nevada | $0.65 |
| New Jersey | $0.61 |
That’s right, folks; the people who whine the most about taxes get far more bang for their buck than those who don’t, in part because they’re a bunch of “welfare queens.” They get the same services as everyone else, but someone else pays for them, because their politicians keep reducing their taxes. Does anyone see the irony in that? I know right wingers tend to be irony deficient, but those of us with fully functioning brains have to be able to grasp this, right?
To sum up, whenever you hear a right winger whine about his taxes, just ask him why he so loves being a welfare queen. Someone has to pay for the services he uses, so if he’s not paying, then someone else is.
Just as an aside, the United States also has one of the lowest rates of taxation in the industrialized world, but I’ll get into that in another post.
Now, let’s talk about the landmine that is government spending.
First off, if we’re going to discuss government spending, it helps to know what it is, and frankly, I have yet to speak to a right winger who understands the concept.
The government is us, or at least, it’s supposed to be. That means, when the government is spending money, WE are spending money on OURSELVES. Got that? It’s not some huge entity “out there” spending OUR MONEY without our permission. We elect them, and they spend our money. Do our representatives waste a lot of our money? Of course they do. Do they spend a lot money on stupid things? You will not get an argument from me on that. But if they do that too often, then we can vote against them and drum their sorry asses out of office, can’t we?
Obviously, not all government spending is the same. But it should go without saying that not all government spending is bad. I think even the most hard-core right-winger would agree that we have to pay for our national defense (although we should be spending less – again, another post) and that police and fire and roads are all good things that the government spends money on. So, what do they have a problem with? Well, they want to kill Social Security, for one. Of course, they don’t want to kill it now, because they want to collect from it. But they want to kill it at some unspecified point in the future, after they’ve gotten everything out of it they will ever get.
Think about that a minute. Social Security is a program we created, so that we could work all of our lives contributing to society, working hard and paying taxes, and not lose everything at the end, when we are finished working and just want to enjoy life. Yet, the right wing wants to kill it, because they have a phobia with regard to “entitlements.” In other words, they feel “entitled” to keep “more of their own money” and use what the government gives them for free, but older Americans, who have worked all of their lives to build the country, are somehow a drain on the economy. See the charts above; who’s more of a drain on the economy; red states or older people?
They also want to kill welfare for the poor (although, strangely, they’re all for handing out billions to the rich – go figure). We live in a capitalist system. In a capitalist system, there is always a subset of people who have to to be left out for whatever reason. The purpose of welfare for the poor is to acknowledge that reality, and to help people get through some tough times Yes, there are people who abuse the system, and take as much as they can get. And yes, there is quite a bit of fraud in the system that needs to be cleaned up. But there is waste, fraud and abuse in any system involving money. Put simply, if there is a pile of money out there, someone will try to steal it. But at its worst, welfare fraud pales in comparison with fraud in defense contracts. Yet, strangely, right wing Republicans don’t seem to want to get rid of the Department of Defense. How strange.
Overall, most government spending is good. The vast majority of people received their primary education from a tax-supported school, and were taught by government-paid teachers. Most people with advanced degrees got them at state-supported colleges and universities, and often used tax money, in the form of grants, to pay for them. And call me crazy, but most private employers have made pretty good use of that state-sponsored pool of employers provided by our tax money. We think having an educated populace makes us competitive in the world, so we invest money in education, because it pays off in the long run.
Wait. Did I just use the word “invest”?
Yes. Yes I did. See, the problem with characterizing all government spending as roughly the same is that there is no consideration of the return on our investment. Spending money on education now will actually create more competition in the job market later, which creates more taxpayers in the future. The more money people make, and the more taxes they will pay, which lessens the burden on everyone else. By giving students money for education now, we create more opportunity for more people to be doctors or lawyers or anything they want to be. With more people with more education in more areas, we increase the number of entrepreneurs, and make ourselves competitive well into the future.
Hell, have you paid attention to the bailouts? Aren’t you sick to death of those teabagger dopes telling you what a waste of money the whole thing was? (Ok, to be fair, a lot of lefties also whined about this, but only with regard to the bank bailouts, not the auto company bailouts. And they were wrong, too.) Well, get this; to date, the total cost of the bailouts to our government is less than zero dollars. Yes, folks; that means we, the people, made a PROFIT from the whole fiasco. Now, how much do you think it would have cost us had we NOT bailed out those banks? Do you honestly think we’re in an economic position to withstand that? That answer is “no",” of course. For that matter, can you imagine Republicans giving banks the money and then demanding repayment? And if you think that’s a possibility, please show me the precedent for that, please, because I can’t find any.
But getting back to the subject at hand, all spending is not the same. Giving oil companies billions of dollars each year is not an investment. Spending $100 billion or more every year on weapons systems that we will never, ever use is more of a waste than most government spending, and it is not an investment in the future. And we actually benefit from most government spending in an incredible number of ways. You may not read the labels on the food you buy, but they’re there, and the government does work to keep the food supply safe (and believe me, if you didn’t notice it before, you certainly notice it when the teeth have been taken out of the law, don’t you?), and if your house is burning or someone robs you, you don’t hesitate to call the fire department or the police because it might cost a little extra tax money down the road.
Ok, so as you can see, taxes are an absolute necessity, the cost of living in a free society. And government spending usually makes our lives better. Certainly, all taxes are not theft, and all government spending is not wasted,
In other words, the right wing is wrong.
Now, let’s talk about deficits. This is probably the stickiest of the three subjects, because the right wingers have completely screwed us on this subject for so long, and a lot of what they say sounds reasonable to the average American.
I know you've heard the argument; "I'm expected to live within my means, why isn't the government." Sounds reasonable, right?
Don't be ridiculous. NO ONE lives entirely within their means.
I’m not going to suggest that government debt is either good or bad, because it’s not that simple. It's not always a bad thing to spend money you don't have. In fact, our entire economy over the last 30 years is built upon exactly that. When you listen to the criticism about the country’s current economic troubles, listen closely to the complaints. The biggest complaint is that banks aren’t lending enough. If debt is so bad, as Republicans seem to be saying right now, why do they encourage more of it?
If you think about it, most businesses these days need lines of credit. It’s simply not possible to run many businesses without a significant credit line available. So, doesn’t that mean that the vast majority of businesses in the United States of America, even large ones, run deficits in the normal course of business. Usually they pay it back, but sometimes, as long as they keep up the interest payments, they can keep the money for a very long time. A lot of investors buy stock on credit, as well. Margin trading is very common. For those of you who are not aware of margin trading, the brokerage or bank lends money to the investor to buy stock. The investor can usually keep the money until they sell the stock; the only thing they have to pay while they hold the stock is a modest interest payment. In other words, the business side of our economy is supported by deficit spending.
But it’s not just about businesses. Individual families quite often run on deficit spending. And I’m not just talking about the parent who suddenly loses their job and pulls out the credit card to pay for groceries, or back to school clothes for the kids.
I suppose you’ve heard this occasionally, probably from a right winger, but supposedly one of the keys to the “American Dream” is home ownership. Apparently, if you don't own a home you're not a proper participant in American society, or something like that. (I prefer to rent, so I suppose that makes me a socialist, eh?) Now, you’ve seen how much it costs to buy a home; it’s unlikely that many people can buy homes with cash. Therefore, most homes are purchased with borrowed money. if you really think about it, a 30-year mortgage is essentially the same as a government bond. You take a home, someone else pays for it now, and you promise to pay a certain amount of money every month for the next 30 years. At the end of that time you get ownership of that home.
Now, I don't think anyone would make the argument that buying a home using a mortgage is a bad thing. It would also be difficult to make a rational argument that providing lines of credit for businesses so they can grow and create jobs and create marketable goods for people to buy would be a bad thing. In order to build a business or a life for your family, sometimes you have to spend money you don’t have yet, but are reasonably certain you will have in the future. Do you let your kids starve because you don’t want to owe anyone any money? If your car breaks down, do you quit your job and sit at home until you can save enough money to get it fixed? If there is no public transportation to a really good job you want badly, do you give it up because you don’t want to be in debt for a car? For that matter, do you incur thousands of dollars in IRS charges if you can’t afford your entire tax bill all at once, rather than go into debt a little and pay the bill now?
Just as is the case with businesses, individuals and family, when it comes to government, there are good deficits and there are bad deficits. Good deficit spending comes when the economy is in a downturn, and the government has to borrow money to pick up the slack. When the economy is down, people still need to feed their families, they still need health care, and those who still have jobs still have to get to work every day. In fact, it could be argued that, during economic downturns the government should borrow money to keep essential services from being cut off, and borrow even more to grease the skids and get the economy moving again.
On the other hand, during good, healthy economic times, the government should have more than enough money to pay for everything it needs, and if possible, it should raise enough to pay back any debts run up during previous downturns. In fact, once the debt is paid, it could also be argued that it should even put money aside, in order to ease the inevitable downturn of the future.
This is really quite simple; the government is like our big American family. Just as you try to put extra money away when you’re employed and making more than you need, and just as you pull out the credit card in order to buy a suit and gas up the car so you can get to your job interview, the government needs to borrow sometimes to get us through tough times and should be putting money away during good times, to prepare for the tough times. And just as you start paying down the credit card once you get that job, the government should be paying its debts when the coffers are flush with cash.
See, that’s the problem with the far right and their current arguments about the deficit. Listen to them howl about it now, and you’d swear they weren’t in charge for most of the last 30 years. The current incarnation of the Republican Party is the most fiscally IRRESPONSIBLE bunch we have ever seen in our history. They have run deficits consistently since they’ve been in charge, except for a short time when Bill Clinton shamed them into balancing the budget. And as soon as they took charge of the entire government, they cut the revenue stream several times, and spent even more money than they had before.
Think about this. When George W. Bush was appointed president by the Supreme Court, the national debt was well over $6 trillion. Is that the right time to cut taxes for the rich? Well, ask yourself this; if you've been out of work for a year and run up debts in the neighborhood of $20,000 and you finally get a job paying $20,000 a year, is it the responsible thing to take your first paycheck and buy a new flat screen HDTV? Or might it be a little more responsible to go to the thrift store and buy a little 20-inch CRT tv and put as much money as possible to paying down the debt?
These people are the exact opposite of "fiscally responsible," folks. Seriously.
The whole time Republicans were in charge, they were bragging about how great the economy was. Remember that? The economy was a little rough when Reagan took office, and he could be forgiven for deficits his first two years in office. But then, after the 1982 recession, we were supposedly in the midst of “the greatest peacetime expansion in history,” but the deficits kept getting bigger and bigger. In fact, they were so big, they started to include the Social Security trust fund in the numbers, just to make the deficit seem smaller. According to Republicans, the economy was stellar, and yet, revenues still weren’t keeping up with spending, and the deficits kept climbing.
Okay, now imagine that a guy won a lottery jackpot of $1 million dollars, and the first thing he did was sell his current $100,000 home and buy a $10 million home on credit. Does that sound like the “fiscally responsible thing to do?” Apparently the Republicans think that’s the height of fiscal responsibility, because that’s what they did all through the 1980s. Then, the Soviet Union fell, and we were victorious in the Cold War. Think that meant we might save a couple of hundred billion dollars every year on “defense” and perhaps put that money toward paying down some debt? Not with the right wingers in charge. George Bush, Sr., to his credit, tried like hell to cut defense, and at every turn he met a stone wall of opposition from his own party. So what happened? Deficits skyrocketed.
Finally, in Bill Clinton, Republicans met their match, and with his guidance, they fashioned a balanced budget, and based on projections, it would have stayed balanced for a decade or more. But the Republican right wing couldn’t stand for that, and the minute George W. Bush was appointed to the presidency by the Supreme Court, and was accompanied by a Republican majority in the House and Senate, they proceeded to scrap the balanced budget and blow up the debt once again.
I have another chart you can show your right wing friends when they start referring to Democrats/liberals as “tax and spend” and/or themselves as “fiscally responsible.” The only way to discuss the national debt with any credibility is in terms of the GDP, since discussing it in terms of constant dollars doesn’t tell the whole story; a trillion dollars now isn't the same as a trillion dollars 30 years ago. Anyway, this chart comes from a website called zFacts, and the numbers check out.
Note that, by the end of World War II, the national debt was roughly 120% of GDP. I think anyone would agree that such a debt is devastatingly high, but the fact of the matter is, with that borrowed money, we helped beat back the Nazis and the Japanese and we built an economy that used to be the envy of the world. And with a booming economy, we were able to reduce our debt steadily throughout the post-war period, even through the Vietnam War.
Yes, that’s right, right wingers; even with an illegal an immoral war that cost tens of thousands of American lives, the debt still didn’t skyrocket. Note that, even when Jimmy Carter was president, the debt, as a percent of GDP, continued to drop as a percent of GDP. Then, those “fiscally responsible” Republicans took over. Between 1945 and 1980, the size of the debt as a percent of GDP had dropped from 120% to about 33% of GDP. After 12 years of ReaganBush, the debt was back up to around 62% of GDP. That “tax and spend” Democrat Bill Clinton nursed it back down to below 60% during his eight years in office, with surpluses as far as the eye could see, meaning we were back on track to making the debt less of a burden. But then, George Bush, Jr. was appointed by the Supreme Court, and those “fiscally responsible” Republicans took over Congress, and what’s the first thing they did? They immediately cut tax rates on rich people and large corporations, spent money at a far greater clip than Democrats ever dreamed of and once again exploded the deficit, while simultaneously encouraging the financial markets to engineer a financial collapse that rivaled the one that led us into the Great Depression. In fact, if you want to be honest about it, the only reason the economy didn’t collapse completely was due to the few safeguards that had been put into place back in the 1930s by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and which hadn’t yet been dismantled by those “fiscally responsible” Republicans.
Look, folks; we have to run deficits right now; we have no choice. This is a critical time for our economy. We came closer to total collapse than any politician will tell you right now. If you think a 9.6% unemployment rate is bad, consider what would have happened had our banks collapsed. Whether you like it or not, our government is the source of our money, which means, when the economy grinds to a halt, the government is the only mechanism we have to get us out of the mess and get it moving again. We are in a deep hole right now; deeper than the politicians inside Washington would like you to believe. For 30 years, Republicans encouraged businesses to send jobs overseas, and we have allowed Republicans to make the economy look good through a series of bubbles, in which the economy was buoyed by money that didn’t actually exist. The new economy has to be built on a foundation much like the old economy back in the post-war era, in which we make things and perform services, and people pay us for it.
Look at the most prosperous period in our history; it began with the government spending tons of borrowed money to build an economic base that was the envy of the world. We have to repeat that exercise now, which means investment in new technologies and new industries. That means deficit spending for now; we have no choice.
The time for Republicans to be wringing their hands and bitching about deficits was throughout the 1980s, when ReaganBush was telling us the economy was strong. if the economy is so strong, and everyone’s doing so well, why would we be borrowing so much money. During what the Republicans referred to at the time as the “longest peacetime expansion in US history,” why were we running up our debt, to the point that it more than doubled, as a percent of GDP?
Think about it. Right now, the debt is sitting at 87.6% of GDP and climbing. If the Republicans hadn't already exploded the deficit in previous years, when the economy was supposedly booming, we could borrow and spend $3 trillion on projects that really get the economy moving, and still be looking at a relatively low debt level, as a percent of GDP. If you want to blame someone for the level of debt, there is absolutely no choice but to blame those "fiscally responsible" Republicans.
Now is not the time to worry about debt, folks. The time to worry about that was when we were making money hand over fist, and could afford to pay the debt down, and possible even save for a rainy day. This country is the proverbial out of work single mother who has to use the credit card to get a new dress and a taxi to go downtown for the job interview. We have to rebuild the economy. If we do it the right way this time – if we invest the money wisely, in creating real, solid jobs – then everything we borrow now will be more than paid for.
And one more thing; about these Bush tax cuts expiring. First of all, no one is talking about letting them all expire. In fact, most of the tax cuts for people making less than $250,000 were already extended by the economic stimulus plan passed in early 2009 (you know, that one the '”fiscally responsible” Republicans continue to complain about). So, what we’re talking about is an extra 3% increase in tax rates for people making over $250,000. But only on the portion of their income OVER $250,000. So, someone making $300,000 a year will see a tax increase of $1,500, and someone making $500,000 per year in taxable income will be hit for an extra $7,500. In return, the government will see a revenue increase of more than $800 billion over the next ten years. The tax rates would simply go back to the level they were when the government was running surpluses. Ironically, the tax rates for the rich would STILL be lower than they were under Ronald Reagan.
If you want a government that is actually "fiscally responsible,” you’ll have to choose Democrats, not Republicans. Republicans keep driving us into the economic ditch, and Democrats keep pulling us out.
"Reagan proved deficits don't matter.” -- Vice President Dick Cheney in 2002.
