Thursday, April 15, 2010

DEATH, TAXES, AND THE SUPER RICH

Thank heavens for Sally Kohn.

“When it comes to the American economy, there is one fundamental lie and one fundamental truth and it is up to you which you choose to believe. The lie is that if the maximum freedom and, thus, maximum benefits are given to the super-rich elites, ultimately everyone will win because the super-rich will create companies and create jobs and buy things and that will benefit the rest of us. It’s been called various things over various times — Reaganomics, trickle down economics, free market capitalism. But mostly it’s just been called bullshit. The average five-year-old could tell you the truth — that if you want to create the most amount of opportunity and prosperity for the most amount of people, it makes much more sense to spread opportunity and prosperity from the get-go rather than give it all to the top and pray it will spread. Bullshit economists — who are mostly from elite backgrounds, educated in elite institutions, and invested in preserving the elite status quo — have been trying for decades to persuade us to believe their lie rather than the common sense truth. Their lie led our economy right into the toilet, but the bullshit economists and their Wall Street pals are still scrambling to convince us that they’re the solution, not the problem. The anti-tax agenda perpetuates the lie. In a currently uneven economy where wealth and privilege easily reproduce themselves while it’s harder and harder to climb from the bottom or the middle up the economic ladder, taxes are the primary way we as a society redistribute money to all the hardworking Americans who deserve their fair share and a fair shake. Sure, those Harvard-educated bank CEOs work hard, but do they work 300 times harder than you? Their pay is based not on hard work but on bullshit economics that favor the already-rich.” (Click here for the rest.)

Click here John Fogerty

The secret word is Redistribute

4 comments:

Alex said...

Brothers and sisters, are you gonna be the problem, or are you gonna be part of the solution?

roldo said...

When I first heard the expression "tickle-down economics", the mental image I got was of some rich bastard drinking champagne in a penthouse and pissing off the balcony.

Diamond Jim said...

Sounds like a pefect metaphor.

Anonymous said...

GOLDMAN CHARGED WITH SUBPRIME FRAUD TODAY!