Click here for the full size image. I don't know how anyone can look at that and still vote Republican. Democrats are certainly not the stalwart protectors of the poor and middle class that they once were, especially as they continue to rely more and more on corporate dollars for reelection, and corporatist policies because they fear being labeled as "anti-business." But the GOP is just crazy, and anyone who argues against the indisputable fact that they are the party of plutocrats and corporations is stupid, lying, or both. This is the reality they have created; this is the reality they want. But it's not enough. It's never enough. And they want to make it worse. It's like Jon Stewart said the other day - the problem, from the GOP perspective, is that the poor don't have any 'skin in the game.' In other words, the problem is that the poor still have skin.
Noted dirty commie socialist and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich notes the following in the op-ed accompanying this image:
Pump-priming works only when a well contains enough water.Look back over the last hundred years and you’ll see the pattern. During periods when the very rich took home a much smaller proportion of total income — as in the Great Prosperity between 1947 and 1977 — the nation as a whole grew faster and median wages surged. We created a virtuous cycle in which an ever growing middle class had the ability to consume more goods and services, which created more and better jobs, thereby stoking demand. The rising tide did in fact lift all boats.
During periods when the very rich took home a larger proportion — as between 1918 and 1933, and in the Great Regression from 1981 to the present day — growth slowed, median wages stagnated and we suffered giant downturns. It’s no mere coincidence that over the last century the top earners’ share of the nation’s total income peaked in 1928 and 2007 — the two years just preceding the biggest downturns.
[...]
But starting in the late 1970s, and with increasing fervor over the next three decades, government did just the opposite. It deregulated and privatized. It cut spending on infrastructure as a percentage of the national economy and shifted more of the costs of public higher education to families. It shredded safety nets. (Only 27 percent of the unemployed are covered by unemployment insurance.) And it allowed companies to bust unions and threaten employees who tried to organize. Fewer than 8 percent of private-sector workers are unionized.
More generally, it stood by as big American companies became global companies with no more loyalty to the United States than a GPS satellite. Meanwhile, the top income tax rate was halved to 35 percent and many of the nation’s richest were allowed to treat their income as capital gains subject to no more than 15 percent tax. Inheritance taxes that affected only the topmost 1.5 percent of earners were sliced. Yet at the same time sales and payroll taxes — both taking a bigger chunk out of modest paychecks — were increased.
We are living in a reality wrought by a thirty year march to the beat of the drum of the extreme conservative orthodoxy. Sure, there have been Democratic administrations in between, but the mantra of deregulate/cut taxes for the "job creators" survives and remains at the forefront of any economic debate. Meanwhile, current Democrats don't understand the importance of agenda setting or proper messaging, so these abject lies continue to pass as good ideas. It's very depressing.
(h/t Balloon Juice)
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