A quick tease - Trickle down Theory and Economic stimulus
This should get you a rough idea of how much of this ranting will go.
Why the Republicans are Wrong
Trickle down theory is a joke; yes, it actually works, in that if you give a ton of money to the rich, a little people will trickle down on the poor. They buy products like everyone else, pizzas and cokes and sandwiches, they own businesses and make products, they employ people and give them salaries. If you give the rich money, they might end up spending it on the poor; a few small percents, that is. With the trickle down theory, a little bit of money will go to the poor, but obviously the rich will keep some to themselves. They do, or obviously they wouldn't be rich. Only a portion will go to the poor, in the best scenarios, and usually it's less than 10% of these types of issues. I don't know, if we want to help the poor, why not give money directly to the poor? Sadly, I believe in the waterfall up theory, that is, money rushes up to the rich. It may seem counter intuitive, but since we don't live in a balanced society, balanced ideas won't work.
The rich simply don't buy as many things as regular people; while your average American has negative money, that is in debt, that is makes LESS than breaking even every year, rich people are actually a part of a group that has little to no debt. By rich, I mean, the .1%, making at least over a million dollars a year, which less than 1% of our population does. After the 15th car and vacation home, they don't really need to spend their money. They're regular people, they drink cokes and drive cars, eating as much food and consuming as much oil, but they don't need a whole lot more. Maybe the drive a little crazy or have bigger homes which consume more electricity, but by and large they don't really need, let alone consume much more than your average person. They eat 2-3 times a day, take bathes, watch TV, pretty normal stuff. How many TV's can a rich person really use? And as such, they don't tend to buy that many. They put a lot of their money back into the banks or into stocks and just let it sitting around, accumulating interest or even more wealth.
Poor people on the other hand, buy a lot more things. Not only do poor people, by that I mean the 99.9% of society (I.E. doctors, small business owners, people who make 500,000 dollars a year), need to buy things just to survive, barely making it by in most occasions, drowning in debt, but there's also a lot more of them. Being in the 99% not only means that we are living in conditions where we need a lot more to get to a comfortable state of living, but that we simply out number the rich. Rich people buy 1 TV, one coke, one sandwich a day, like normal people. Possessing the wealth of 100 people doesn't give them the appetite and consumption. They may live extravagantly, but there's a point where this is no longer necessary. A rich person's bed room is typically about the size of a normal person's, maybe a little bigger or prettier, but generally speaking they don't possess anything special about them that requires it. If you give a million dollars to a man who already has 50, what does he spend it on? More waste? Where as, if you give 1 million dollars to poor people, it stimulates the economy, in a better way. They all go out and fix their AC's, buy replacement parts on their car, buy food or water, pay off debts, they not only spend it, but spend it on more regular things. A yacht company might get really rich off of giving rich people more money, but if you want to stimulate the general economy, what most people are buying, regular houses, regular cars, regular food, you have to give the money to them.
And here's the crazy thing, it benefits the rich. Most rich are that way because they sell a product; they possess something your average person needs, and thus make money by selling it en masse. This requires selling it to a broad audience, hiring workers, and so on. Your average person becomes one of these customers AND one of these workers. You give a salary to people who, essentially, buy your product. Henry Ford established that paying workers enough money to buy their products was a good business model, because it's just common sense. When you give money to the poor, it goes right back up to the rich, to buy their products. Perhaps not equally, as people at Walmart also will shop at target or a go to a fancy restaurant, but in general, the money you give to your workers, goes right back up to you. While it can result in some loss when done to single individuals, I.E. if you're the only guy who pays their workers well, when it's done across the board, everyone more or less benefits equally. The best way to get this done is to mandate it, require it across the board. We can establish this via minimum wage and taxes, quite often than not, as it's a way to universally effect everyone. While the details of exactly what should be minimum wage and the tax rate are difficult to flesh out, the general idea stays the same. Money going to the poor, means money going to the rich, because poor people buy rich people's products. They get paid to work in factory's all day and then buy back the products they just spent 8 hours a day making. If you want a sustainable business model to support the rich, you need to give the poor, the middle class, the upper class, enough money to actually buy these things. Society is best balanced as a pyramid; there is an equal weight distributed, with the top not being heavier the bottom, but quite the opposite; those on the top have nearly as much as those on the bottom. For various reasons, this is rarely the case; an obelisk, that is a straight up and down spire, can support it's own weight, but is very easy to be knocked over. It's not very well balanced and subtle shifts in the market can knock it over, but it will stand when things are good. Something that is top heavy will fall; it's not only more easily knocked over, say by the wind, but couldn't in most circumstance survive something like a hurricane. If it's too top heavy, like an upside down pyramids, it will either crumble or fall over. Without the right support, without the right infrastructure, an economy that builds itself on the foundation of the 99%, which our economy does, requires them to function. When you hurt them, you hurt themselves. When you help them, you help themselves.
Thus I believe in the trickle up theory, or perhaps, the waterfall up theory. It may seem counter intuitive, but the rich vastly out do the average people in terms of wealth, and thus it is the case. All the money poor people spend, goes right back up to rich people. Poor people will spend the money, since they not only want a better life beyond that of what they can make breaking even, but are in debt. They are in many cases legally obligated to pay the money. So what happens when you give the poor money? It goes right back up the rich. Huge portions of it. Perhaps not all, and it's not all distributed equally, but huge portions will go to the rich. 100% of the money goes to the poor, and then most of that goes back up to the rich. There's no putting it into a bank account or the 15th yacht, it goes to the general economy, which rich people presumably got rich working in. The wealth concentrates and accumulates in the top .1%, who then stay in that position of power and accumulate more. It doesn't hurt them quite as much to part with money, and most of it comes right back to them if it's given to the poor. Thus, the idea of, taking from the rich, and giving to the poor, rather than giving tax breaks to the rich, and requiring social services to be paid for by people who can barely afford it, not only is more noble, but, it actually is a more sustainable system. Morality has it's basis in rationality, most of the time.
Why the Democrats are insane.
Because they did the exact same God damn thing! They didn't ever highlight why these ideas were wrong, or how their new ideas would work, they just said, I don't like them. In fact, they spent an enormous amount of time telling you the Republicans were the devil, rather than explaining why the idea wouldn't work. And to their fault, they never truly addressed why they were wrong; maybe if people had isolated which factors were bad and why, explained through debate why each aspect wasn't going to work, and then had proof of it, the same mistakes could have been avoided again. But instead, the Democrats more or less copied the idea, with a "twist", that either accomplished nothing or made things worse.
An economic stimulus wouldn't work because pumping a few billion dollars into a 16 trillion dollar economy isn't going to do a damn thing. On the one hand, our economy is below maximum production; our employment levels are down, and thus, if they were say, at 2% unemployment, rather than say 20%, our potential could be more readily achieved; we've got all these people grasping, begging for a job to make money. Begging for work; if we give them it, our productivity will increase. It takes money to get money, so if you just give a little boost, enough to hire on more people, to produce more, to make back the resources you expended on them (that presumably is what a job is), you result in a net gain. Our economy is far from at 100% of it's potential, and given not only jobs, but specialized jobs people are capable of, working as Doctor's or mechanics or other forms of skilled labor, not only employment, but specific jobs, are not being worked to their full potential. They never will be completely, but that always gives room for improvement; there's such a thing as diminishing returns, where spending more resources to get more wouldn't be worth the effort, but in our given situation there's a lot of room for growth just based on where we are right now.
Unfortunately, 150 billion dollars is not going to be enough. 500 dollars per 300 million people = 150 billion dollars. It's a decent amount of money, but it's not even 1% of our economy. It's not going to be sufficient to boost our economy and allow us to bounce back to where we once were, or get to a new position. It's to little money to make a noticeable impact. And the trillions it would take are not available, especially since our government is already 16 trillions in debt. Obama's Solution? Do the exact same thing, but spread it over time!
Yes, the democrats put forward the exact same stupid idea and, added a twist. Instead, it will be spread out over time! Yes, that way people don't save it, and actually spend it! Except, even if they did spent it, which there wasn't much more spending, it didn't do enough to have a more than negligible impact. While the Republicans are wrong on this issue, in that it won't be important enough to matter, the Democrats voted against it, worked against it Vehemently, make Republicans out to the devil, the worst thing mankind has even seen, possessing every bad and evil attribute imaginable, from hating medical care to being racist and eating puppies, none of which has proof behind it. And then, what do they do? The exact same thing! If you're going to say someone is evil for doing something and then do it yourself, you've got to be insane. You've put so much effort into it it's hard to believe that you're so dumb you can't see you're making the same mistake. Whoever thought this was a good idea must be completely nuts. I realize most people who supported it are actually morons, and just follow their leaders blindly, but whoever is in charge, and green lighted this, has to be insane. Or just not pay attention to anything they're doing so carelessly to throw billions of dollars at getting their guy elected, and not give a fuck what it is he is actually endorsing. Which is in it's own right, absolutely insane.
Edited by Manoka, 18 October 2014 - 01:31 AM.
