[Image from stoneofakind.com]I'd be the first to admit I'm not an economist, but I can't help observing how certain economic ideas have played out in our country's recent history.
Consider this business of helping the rich.
Geoff Colvin, writing in the February 2 edition of Fortune magazine, suggests that's exactly how President Obama should design his economic plan. Stimulus plans, tax rebates, and increasing the capital gains and dividend taxes on people earning more than $250K a year, just won't do it, says Colvin. While they may provide a short-term boost, they won't succeed in the long-term.
Here's Colvin's idea: "Let's help corporations and the rich."
Why would we want to do that? Because we all want to create jobs and increase investment, and those things come from "companies and the wealthy."
Now, that doesn't mean we just hand out checks to very rich people. "Rather than spending more, our plutocrats need to invest more, since private investment creates long-term jobs. So let's offer high earners the very modest help of just leaving them alone..."
Oh, one other thing: we need to reduce our corporate income tax, which says Colvin [untruthfully] is "among the world's highest."
Colvin sums up his ideas by referring to that late great, but very sleepy president, Ronald Reagan. The initiatives he proposes "could be parts of what will surely be the most ambitious economic program since Ronald Reagan's first term."
Yeah? And we all know how that turned out! What is it with these guys? They never give up. Colvin is doing nothing more than offering the same old failed "trickle down" economics that didn't work before and won't work now.
1 comment:
The truth is that during periods of high taxes we still had prosperity. Taxes are a cost of doing business and investors cannot put excess money under their mattresses. They will still invest for profit and pay the taxes. When was the last time anyone turned down a raise in pay because they would have to pay higher taxes? People go into business in high and in low tax periods. Who would not like to return to the economics of the eight years, under Clinton, rather than the eight years of Bush, in spite of the taxes? During the Bush years, how come we lost jobs and actual wages decreased? What did the tax breaks accomplish for the country? What did the excess money get invested in and who benefited? We can see that the USA declined and the money saved in taxes apparently did not trickle down within the USA.
I did not pay less taxes during the Bush years, did most of you? In the meantime corporate America seems to have invested in overseas facilities and might have provided jobs elsewhere with dollars that might have done better if invested in the USA
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