Greene and deficits; trickle-down economics

Greene and deficits

Richard Greene was correct in his Sunday column, “Taxes and national debt: Ask now what the future holds.” Personal expenditure exceeding income leads to borrowing, and excessive borrowing is the path to bankruptcy.

The only two ways out of this dilemma are to reduce expenses and to raise income. In the government’s case, it’s clear that further expense reduction would increase poverty, lower education quality and health coverage and deprive the infrastructure of recovery.

Raising government income by affordable taxes or, better still, by penalizing legal tax avoidance, would be in the interest of everyone except the plutocrats and their lobbyists who work to protect theirs.

The natural order is for the rich to get richer and the poor to get nowhere, and it is the responsibility of civilized government to redress this.

You’d think Greene’s angst about deficits would make it worth mentioning that under President Obama the deficit has decreased by two-thirds.

Greene invokes the old voodoo economics rule that “tax revenues increase when tax rates are cut,” even though it’s never happened.

And, of course, he calls benefits for programs that both employers and employees pay for over 45 or 50 years “entitlements,” as if they are welfare.

People paying no income tax still pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, property, gasoline and sales taxes.

About sales taxes: People in Arlington paid an extra half-cent sales tax — for 10 years — that Mayor Greene promoted so the taxpayers would pay $135 million of the $190 million cost of the new stadium built for the for-profit Texas Rangers (fronted by George W. Bush).

That’s an entitlement!

I believe it was the administration of our former president that said deficits don’t matter, but that was after he destroyed the two years of surpluses created by his predecessor.

Greene knows as well as anyone who pays attention to politics that a huge chunk of the increased debt came from George W. Bush’s unfounded and unnecessary war in Iraq. That debt unfairly landed on President Obama’s watch and it’s still going.

Greene wrote that “more than 45 percent of Americans pay no federal income tax.” But he failed to say how many are children, disabled or retired.

Greene also wrote that the “richest 20 percent are paying almost 87 percent of income taxes.” But he failed to say that the top 1 percent control 40 percent of the wealth or that the top 20 percent own 85 percent.

If the tax system is rigged against the wealthy, why did President Obama pay only 18 percent in tax on $500,000 income and Mitt Romney 14 percent on millions?

Trickle down

Here’s an explanation of trickle-down economics, the centerpiece of Tea Party politics.

Politicians give the rich huge tax cuts, which greatly reduces their contribution to “wasteful” social projects such as nonpoisonous water and education.

The rich pocket most of this and spend the rest to elect politicians who will deregulate their business activities, which allows them to pollute at will, gouge and swindle their customers and exploit their workers. The jobs they do create with their additional wealth are few, and they’re mostly low-wage, slave-labor jobs.

Trickle-down is very good for business! But who got left out? Just about everybody else!

This story was originally published April 27, 2016 at 5:46 PM with the headline "Greene and deficits; trickle-down economics."