Its a sad state of affairs that we find ourselves in these days. Sad because we have elected representatives (and a President) based on their flame throwing ability rather than understanding how to govern, how our government and monetary system work, or how to work as a collective body to make the lives of all American People better. They reject facts that they dont like or that contradict their world view. I’m going to ask a fairly simple question that has a very complex answer. We used to be able to pay for all the things we needed and wanted from government. What has changed?
Well the thing that has changed the most is that one party abandoned trying to make government work. Republicans, as the party of “small government” have set about discrediting, sabotaging, and lying about the workings of government. Its hard to govern when one party seems to be hell bent on destroying the one thing that unites every American. Their government. Here is how some things have changed.
Debt Hysteria
I will say this once. The debt as it stands today does not matter. Thats the biggest lie the right has hoisted upon government. They constantly say we dont have the money to pay for this or that. We used to be able to pay for these things…What changed? Tax Rates changed, dramatically. In 1970 the top marginal tax rate was 71.75%. In 2015 it was 39.6%. Thats a pretty steep cut. Its also a pretty steep loss in revenue if you subscribe to the Republican view that we dont have money to pay for things. Their view is that if they let the top earners keep more of their money, that they will magically create jobs and build companies which will spur growth. We have been a living laboratory for that view since Regan was President, and by every metric it has proven untrue. Trickle Down doesnt. George Bush I had it right. Its Voodoo Economics. It doesnt work (unless of course you reside in the top tax brackets).
Now I dont think we need to have top tax rates of 70%, but I also dont think that our spending needs to be curtailed, just managed responsibly. People need to remember the term investment. Government invests in people. The only goal of the Private Sector is to make money…full stop. They dont care about people, they are not altruistic, they dont care about the environment. They dont care if you can live on what they pay you. They are there to make money…thats it. If any of those things I just listed happen its only because they were in the financial interests of the Private Sector to do so. Profit first, always.
Government used to invest in people. It used to build things. Look at the Hoover Dam, the Panama Canal, the interstate highway system, the TVA. Government built all of that, and they paid people to do it. Most of them were not government employees but worked for someone contracting with the government. Was there waste? Of course there was. Was there favoritism based on the clout of your member of Congress? With out a doubt, yes. They got built though and people earned a living building them and the results were owned by every American citizen. They were public infrastructure. The job of your representative should be to keep that to a minimum, not refuse to invest.
What is being proposed today is that via tax credits “public/private” partnerships should build these things. Its important to know what that means. Via tax credits the government is taking all the risk out of the project. If it fails, the government pays the check, but if it succeeds, the private company not only comes out ahead because they didnt have to invest in the project…they will own it. The government wont. They can charge tolls in the case of highways. As was the case in Chicago and Atlanta, when something as simple as collecting fines for parking meters was privatized, suddenly every stretch of space had a meter and the fines were high, and the governments had signed away their rights to regulate without incurring steep financial costs. It was no longer owned in the public interest. There was the added costs to store front businesses who could not attract customers because of the meters being everywhere. In the case of tolled freeways, governments are unable to build additional capacity that might compete with toll roads for 50 years. How is this helpful? Its not, unless your only goal is to make money, not act in the interest of the public. There is always talk of waste and abuse but little of it is directed where it really should go.
Defense
Nowhere is waste fraud and abuse not to mention some gross incompetence more rampant than in the Department of Defense. As an example, spare parts for military equipment. There is no single system that inventories spare parts…none. They could not tell you if you asked how many of a specific part they have, where it is warehoused, nor how many they have. They could be in several locations…nobody knows. They have also been aware of this problem for quite some time, but it is such a huge problem that its very hard to fix, and asking for funds to fix it admits the problem exists. Defense has been given a blank check for way too long. When the aforementioned part is needed what ends up happening more times than not is they just buy a new one when the part is already there. They just cant find it. Just think about that and that the President wants to increase their budget 52 Billion.
Republicans want to cut healthcare for the neediest among us to finance that kind of reckless spending .
Congresses Constitutional mandate is to spend money. They dont do it wisely.
The right has been electing people who must as a prerequisite be Flame Throwers. That particular trait however doesnt pretend to understand that as a fiat currency the US Fed can print money at will to pay for government investment, nor do they seem to understand that the Fed sets interest rates so more spending doesnt necessarily lead to higher interest rates. They also dont understand that China purchases US debt not as some Damocles Sword to hold over Americans but as a means to keep their own currency low to make their exports cheaper. China would literally destroy its economy if it sold off all its US Debt, and the effect on the US economy would not be as bad because the dollar would drop and US goods would be a lot cheaper everywhere…but thats moot because it wont happen.
In the same vain…we cannot go broke. We wont run out of dollars when the government can create them at will. Anyone who says different is lying or stupid. I’ll leave that judgment to you.
Republican ideology has been slowing crashing around them since the financial crisis in 2008. People were unaware that republican ideology was the biggest ingredient in that collapse, but over time it has become clear that something has been wrong. People dont feel like a recovery includes them. The republican roll out of their “repeal and replace” now shows that they have been selling people snake oil for the last 8 years and they dont seem willing to buy more.