The problem is that Republicans and corporate Dems have the same donors. Real progressives like Bernie are the best bet to fight fake populists like drumpf and his cronies.
Oct 10, 2022·edited Oct 10, 2022Liked by Robert Reich
The “trickle-down” snake oil salesmen, and women, love to say that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” though they’re far less honest, able-bodied seamen than plundering pirates.
What that they always fail to note when they repeat that hoary expression is that a rising tide lifts only those boats with intact hulls; for those whose figurative hulls are leaking or fully breached — and that describes tens of millions of hard-working Americans who’re barely treading water — all that rising tide serves to do is submerge those boats deeper and deeper till the occupants drown.
What I continue to wonder is why "the people," those who work and pay taxes and vote for those in power, continue to tolerate the blatant, unfettered transfer of their "wealth" to the rich-richer-richest.
I would contend, contrary to the Professor’s newsletter, that Democrats this term did offer “[a] bottom-up economics that invests in the education and health of the public, and the infrastructure connecting them.”
To refresh our memories, I would note, in late Spring 2020, after Joe Biden had become the Party’s presumptive Presidential nominee, he and Bernie Sanders created 6 policy task forces which, according to Sanders, “had some of the most knowledgeable people in the country coming together” to deal with education, climate change, healthcare, the economy, criminal justice, and immigration reform. Sanders had concluded that if the compromises they had achieved were implemented, “life would improve for tens and tens of millions of working people.”
Because Senate Republicans refused to allow regular order, Democrats had to cram the President’s entire legislative agenda into one bill that only could be passed through the procedural maneuver we know as budget reconciliation. Despite certain pieces disallowed by the Senate Parliamentarian into the plan, the legislation (BBB), nonetheless, would have helped to remedy much of the country’s grotesque inequalities of wealth and income.
When the reconciliation package, this past January, failed, by two votes (Manchin and Sinema), to pass, I decided, as important as it was this election season to defend democracy at the state and local levels, my principal commitment would be to help hold the House and pick up at least two Senate seats. Besides, state and local government would be subject to regulations of Congress.
My opposition to the Professor’s position notwithstanding, I would be remiss were I not to underscore the nearly impossible odds of holding the House, wherein Republicans need flip only five seats in highly gerrymandered terrain. Still, though I’ve posted it before, it’s worth restating that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote, “Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.” As follow-up, I simply would note, generally speaking, that only in retrospect is the true value of persistence in the face of difficulty revealed.
I remember Sam Brownback's epic failure in Kansas in 2012, the "Great Kansas Tax Cut Experiment, " approved by the likes of ALEC, Reagan's "Trickle Down," "Voodoo economics" guru Arthur Laffer, and tax-cut zealot, Grover Norquist; all successful republican scam artists.
Needless to say, the reckless Kansas "Experiment" was an abject failure, as infrastructure, social services, education, etcetera, could not be sustained, as a result of fallen tax revenues (which is exactly what this "Experiment " was designed to do).
Now, years later, Idiot Truss wants to be a latter-day "supply-side" scammer, and, again, it's not working.
The wealthy will continue their class warfare, as long as they have feckless lacky politicians like Reagan, Trump, Truss and others, peddling the same snakeoil, and the continued enablement of such blatant class-warfare by the vast majority of the democratic party, because the democrats refuse to employ effective
Trickle down? More like gush up!. It is time for Democratic political leaders to start explaining what it is, When Reagan cut taxes in 1986 I was a school public school teacher earning a modest living. My taxes went up $700 from the previous year. This was true of every "tax cut" enacted since 1986, the amount of increase in taxes owed went up. Now I am retired, living on 3 small pensions so for the first time in 34 years I got a walloping $225 back from the Feds and only had to pay $3 for State tax. I'm sure I'm not the only formerly middle income American who experienced the same thing. Why don't they connect the dots?
This has been around for years because the average American is not educated well enough to recognize gobbledygook. It is often spoken by supposed distinguished Americans knowing it is false in order to perpetuate the lie.
Until we have public funding of elections, Congress will always be bought and paid for. In my own state of Florida, the Dems depend primarily on ordinary people to back their campaigns. They can't compete with the GOPers who get million$ to fund their campaigns. We need to go back to public funding of campaigns. But that won't happen because the political apparatus runs on $$. Unfortunately, it will take a depression to make that happen. The filthy rich are running us in that direction by starving the ordinary buyer of earnings to buy with.
I’ve lived through Reagan’s Trickle Down era. It did nothing for me or the middle class. I can’t understand how this failed,corrupt concept still gets pushed back on us. Politicians keep drinking the BILLIONAIRE Kool Aid to drive the country further and further into the ground.
While we no longer have castles, manors, serfs or vassals, we do have a modern simulacrum of the Middle Ages. The objects are not as visible but the effects remain just as pernicious.
We have substituted the hedge fund for the privet hedge and the corporation for the lord's estate.
What we have not changed is greed, now fueled with the internet, the meme, the "influencer".
We are deceived and distracted with the bright shiny objects now littering our lives from such as these:
- migrant caravans
- critical race theory
- welfare queens
- Antifa
- American carnage
If someone is patting you on the back for being better than another with one hand especially if he loudly says you have been unjustly disadvantaged, just like a skilled magician, you can bet he is picking your pocket with the other hand.
because if you do not know history then you are bound to repeat it. our attention span is shortened. but history didn't just begin NOW. it doesn't have to be your history for you to be able to learn from it. are we (collective) not doing a good enough job teaching the next generations? or are we just not listening to each other?
This article neglected to mention that to improve public infrastructure and services tax increases across the board are required.Wealthy people can and do move their tax affairs offshore leaving the middle and working people to fund government spend.Britain's Labour party has committed to keep the tax cuts proposed by the ruling Conservatives apart from a decrease to the top rate.As we know many wealthy individuals pay themselves via dividends or capital gains which are more favourably treated.Until the Labour Party is honest about the need to fix the inequalities of the current UK taxation system then it will always be left trying to explain how it can fund improvements to health education and social security without running up yet more public debt.I think that this is applicable too to the Democrats.No one likes to pay more taxes but the alternative which has been tried under Reagan and Thatcher is to let everyone fend for themselves.That is the credo of free enterprise "think tanks" but it is a discredited one when we can see that only through collective action can we fightback against pandemics,ecological disaster and military aggression.
As one who has worked in public policymaking bodies at the local, state and national level, I can attest that this missive is spot-on.
We should not be surprised that the hoarders at the top build all kinds of structures and institutions to further economic and social inequality; while immoral, it's totally logical. The tragedy is the four decades-long failure of so-called progressive forces to to mount effective, sustained counter-measures. And that includes the Administration for which Secretary Reich served.
I remember back in the early 1980s when "Trickle-down economics" was being pushed that I and my co-workers, non-economists knew it was a stupid idea. I had watched the shows about the rich and the famous and understood well that those folks were not about to give up any of their new gains to anyone for any purpose, not even to build their brand beyond getting their name out there, and definitely not to help raise incomes or improve working conditions of their workers. Many of the rich and famous are deeply addicted to accumulation. It becomes a contest to see who can get the most, hoping people won't notice how they get it, then suddenly, they are too rich to stop. I think a lot of people don't think of that because we have been conditioned to see the rich and famous as somehow brilliant, mostly nice people who wouldn't hurt the little guy who one day could be rich like them. It makes no sense, but I think it is built into a society where what one has often indicates the level of respect one gets. And, what one has opens them to all kinds of benefits like education, jobs, power, etc. Conservatives/Republicans in this country have attached themselves to "trickle-down" and liberals/Democrats have a hard time getting traction in opposition because, let's face it, those who benefited from "trickle-down" own the media, industry, telecommunications, and more. Their voices and money speak far louder than what the rest of us can say. Building from the bottom is certainly the right strategy, but when the weight of the wealthy is so great, how can the have-nots get started. Then, there's the filibuster that stops nearly everything that could curb the "trickle-down" insanity. Ugh!
The problem is that Republicans and corporate Dems have the same donors. Real progressives like Bernie are the best bet to fight fake populists like drumpf and his cronies.
The “trickle-down” snake oil salesmen, and women, love to say that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” though they’re far less honest, able-bodied seamen than plundering pirates.
What that they always fail to note when they repeat that hoary expression is that a rising tide lifts only those boats with intact hulls; for those whose figurative hulls are leaking or fully breached — and that describes tens of millions of hard-working Americans who’re barely treading water — all that rising tide serves to do is submerge those boats deeper and deeper till the occupants drown.
What I continue to wonder is why "the people," those who work and pay taxes and vote for those in power, continue to tolerate the blatant, unfettered transfer of their "wealth" to the rich-richer-richest.
I would contend, contrary to the Professor’s newsletter, that Democrats this term did offer “[a] bottom-up economics that invests in the education and health of the public, and the infrastructure connecting them.”
To refresh our memories, I would note, in late Spring 2020, after Joe Biden had become the Party’s presumptive Presidential nominee, he and Bernie Sanders created 6 policy task forces which, according to Sanders, “had some of the most knowledgeable people in the country coming together” to deal with education, climate change, healthcare, the economy, criminal justice, and immigration reform. Sanders had concluded that if the compromises they had achieved were implemented, “life would improve for tens and tens of millions of working people.”
Because Senate Republicans refused to allow regular order, Democrats had to cram the President’s entire legislative agenda into one bill that only could be passed through the procedural maneuver we know as budget reconciliation. Despite certain pieces disallowed by the Senate Parliamentarian into the plan, the legislation (BBB), nonetheless, would have helped to remedy much of the country’s grotesque inequalities of wealth and income.
When the reconciliation package, this past January, failed, by two votes (Manchin and Sinema), to pass, I decided, as important as it was this election season to defend democracy at the state and local levels, my principal commitment would be to help hold the House and pick up at least two Senate seats. Besides, state and local government would be subject to regulations of Congress.
My opposition to the Professor’s position notwithstanding, I would be remiss were I not to underscore the nearly impossible odds of holding the House, wherein Republicans need flip only five seats in highly gerrymandered terrain. Still, though I’ve posted it before, it’s worth restating that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote, “Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.” As follow-up, I simply would note, generally speaking, that only in retrospect is the true value of persistence in the face of difficulty revealed.
I remember Sam Brownback's epic failure in Kansas in 2012, the "Great Kansas Tax Cut Experiment, " approved by the likes of ALEC, Reagan's "Trickle Down," "Voodoo economics" guru Arthur Laffer, and tax-cut zealot, Grover Norquist; all successful republican scam artists.
Needless to say, the reckless Kansas "Experiment" was an abject failure, as infrastructure, social services, education, etcetera, could not be sustained, as a result of fallen tax revenues (which is exactly what this "Experiment " was designed to do).
Now, years later, Idiot Truss wants to be a latter-day "supply-side" scammer, and, again, it's not working.
The wealthy will continue their class warfare, as long as they have feckless lacky politicians like Reagan, Trump, Truss and others, peddling the same snakeoil, and the continued enablement of such blatant class-warfare by the vast majority of the democratic party, because the democrats refuse to employ effective
strategies to expose and stop such scams.
Trickle down? More like gush up!. It is time for Democratic political leaders to start explaining what it is, When Reagan cut taxes in 1986 I was a school public school teacher earning a modest living. My taxes went up $700 from the previous year. This was true of every "tax cut" enacted since 1986, the amount of increase in taxes owed went up. Now I am retired, living on 3 small pensions so for the first time in 34 years I got a walloping $225 back from the Feds and only had to pay $3 for State tax. I'm sure I'm not the only formerly middle income American who experienced the same thing. Why don't they connect the dots?
This has been around for years because the average American is not educated well enough to recognize gobbledygook. It is often spoken by supposed distinguished Americans knowing it is false in order to perpetuate the lie.
Until we have public funding of elections, Congress will always be bought and paid for. In my own state of Florida, the Dems depend primarily on ordinary people to back their campaigns. They can't compete with the GOPers who get million$ to fund their campaigns. We need to go back to public funding of campaigns. But that won't happen because the political apparatus runs on $$. Unfortunately, it will take a depression to make that happen. The filthy rich are running us in that direction by starving the ordinary buyer of earnings to buy with.
I’ve lived through Reagan’s Trickle Down era. It did nothing for me or the middle class. I can’t understand how this failed,corrupt concept still gets pushed back on us. Politicians keep drinking the BILLIONAIRE Kool Aid to drive the country further and further into the ground.
While we no longer have castles, manors, serfs or vassals, we do have a modern simulacrum of the Middle Ages. The objects are not as visible but the effects remain just as pernicious.
We have substituted the hedge fund for the privet hedge and the corporation for the lord's estate.
What we have not changed is greed, now fueled with the internet, the meme, the "influencer".
We are deceived and distracted with the bright shiny objects now littering our lives from such as these:
- migrant caravans
- critical race theory
- welfare queens
- Antifa
- American carnage
If someone is patting you on the back for being better than another with one hand especially if he loudly says you have been unjustly disadvantaged, just like a skilled magician, you can bet he is picking your pocket with the other hand.
because if you do not know history then you are bound to repeat it. our attention span is shortened. but history didn't just begin NOW. it doesn't have to be your history for you to be able to learn from it. are we (collective) not doing a good enough job teaching the next generations? or are we just not listening to each other?
This article neglected to mention that to improve public infrastructure and services tax increases across the board are required.Wealthy people can and do move their tax affairs offshore leaving the middle and working people to fund government spend.Britain's Labour party has committed to keep the tax cuts proposed by the ruling Conservatives apart from a decrease to the top rate.As we know many wealthy individuals pay themselves via dividends or capital gains which are more favourably treated.Until the Labour Party is honest about the need to fix the inequalities of the current UK taxation system then it will always be left trying to explain how it can fund improvements to health education and social security without running up yet more public debt.I think that this is applicable too to the Democrats.No one likes to pay more taxes but the alternative which has been tried under Reagan and Thatcher is to let everyone fend for themselves.That is the credo of free enterprise "think tanks" but it is a discredited one when we can see that only through collective action can we fightback against pandemics,ecological disaster and military aggression.
I just shook my head in wonder at Liz Truss’ budget proposal. So glad she got the pushback that she did.
Trickle down economy created a parasite class of capitalists.
As one who has worked in public policymaking bodies at the local, state and national level, I can attest that this missive is spot-on.
We should not be surprised that the hoarders at the top build all kinds of structures and institutions to further economic and social inequality; while immoral, it's totally logical. The tragedy is the four decades-long failure of so-called progressive forces to to mount effective, sustained counter-measures. And that includes the Administration for which Secretary Reich served.
I remember back in the early 1980s when "Trickle-down economics" was being pushed that I and my co-workers, non-economists knew it was a stupid idea. I had watched the shows about the rich and the famous and understood well that those folks were not about to give up any of their new gains to anyone for any purpose, not even to build their brand beyond getting their name out there, and definitely not to help raise incomes or improve working conditions of their workers. Many of the rich and famous are deeply addicted to accumulation. It becomes a contest to see who can get the most, hoping people won't notice how they get it, then suddenly, they are too rich to stop. I think a lot of people don't think of that because we have been conditioned to see the rich and famous as somehow brilliant, mostly nice people who wouldn't hurt the little guy who one day could be rich like them. It makes no sense, but I think it is built into a society where what one has often indicates the level of respect one gets. And, what one has opens them to all kinds of benefits like education, jobs, power, etc. Conservatives/Republicans in this country have attached themselves to "trickle-down" and liberals/Democrats have a hard time getting traction in opposition because, let's face it, those who benefited from "trickle-down" own the media, industry, telecommunications, and more. Their voices and money speak far louder than what the rest of us can say. Building from the bottom is certainly the right strategy, but when the weight of the wealthy is so great, how can the have-nots get started. Then, there's the filibuster that stops nearly everything that could curb the "trickle-down" insanity. Ugh!