Politics

I think in this upcoming election we need to seriously take a look at our political state in this country.

When it comes to us younger Americans, we have a large responsibility for our future. At the current moment we are not only responsible for our own expenses within the government (education, roads, defense budget, social security, etc.), we're responsible for the previous generations' expenses too. Our generation has to face the reality that the previous generation (people who were born between 1960 through 1980) has not paid for any major governmental expense. They have grown up with the philosophy that bigger is better, more is better, excess is the best. This has resulted in their huge support for the "trickle down" theory of taxation, which is known as supply side economics.

This theory of economic policy basically states that when you put money into the hands of people who own businesses, lower corporate taxation, and keep taxes as low as possible that money will "trickle down" into the hands of the middle and lower class through the investment of business. The richest citizens will put money into stocks, do entrepreneurial investments, and invest in their own private businesses. Corporations will expand their operations, opening new stores, new warehouses, new production facilities, and whatnot. This will result in new jobs for the middle and lower classes and thus putting money into their hands, generating more taxation revenue, and allowing for greater demand for the nation's goods. There is a huge philosophical problem with this idea when it is combined with capitalistic philosophy.

The need of American corporations to maintain high profit margins and increase upon the previous year's profit shows that when corporations gain a tax benefit, they won't spend it building new facilities in the United States, they'll use the money to either contract out labor, manufacturing, or other aspects of their industry in the name of saving money and increasing profits. So with the reduced tax expense that corporations will be paying to the government they record record profits, all the while paying less money to a foreign nationality to produce the goods they sell here for several times the production price. The end result of this corporate cycle is the corporations make more money while paying less to the government, resulting in more outsourced American jobs, less money from the American middle and lower classes going into tax revenue and reducing revenue.

When rich people gain more money, what exactly do they do with it? If they really wanted to be productive with it, they would distribute it amongst the average, everyday people to spend it on items that would stimulate the economy. However, they buy a yacht, a new $20,000,000 house, and a new high-end car (probably manufactured in Europe). How in the hell does this benefit the American people? What can a rich person possibly do with another $2,000,000 that a group of middle-class or low-class citizens couldn't do? If you give a rich person $2,000,000 they won't know what to do with it. They already have bought everything they want. They won't invest in business when it seems to be a risky investment, especially if their current investments are generating a huge portion of their current income. If I got the tax refund that people like the Bushes, Cheney, Buffet, and Gates received, I would definitely be buying one of the houses that are on the market, buying some new items that I've been desirous to have for a while, and with what I could spend, I would distribute it amongst my family to help them buy what they needed. Although not all people would react in this same way, I'm sure there are enough people who would be willing to do a similar thing with the money they received.

So why did these people believe the hype of this economic philosophy? Really it was a massive lie propagated by the Republican Party of the United States saying that the middle and lower classes would receive the bulk of the tax breaks, and that any tax break passed would inevitably favor them, allowing them to purchase more, have more, and live better. I think we can examine the past several years and see that things amongst the middle and lower classes have not improved. As a matter of fact, many complain that they have gotten worse since the massive desire to outsource has come around. Jobs that would have been done in the United States in the 1970s are now being done almost everywhere except for the United States.

This blog was going to have a much clearer purpose, but I'm a bit tired and it started turning into gibberish and weaving in and out of argument. So I'll write more on this later.