Everywhere we turn today, we hear discussions about the United States economy. Emotionally charged words, like unemployment, taxes, entitlements, Medicare, Medicaid, social security, national debt, deficit spending, welfare, unskilled workers . . . are used to scare, anger, and manipulate American citizens from paying attention to several very important negative facts about our economy. These negative facts, which resulted from the Republican Party's economic policies for the past 31 years, will continue after Mitt Romney is elected The President of the United States. The negative facts are as follows:
1. Despite the cries by American corporations that lower taxes is needed in order to reduce unemployment, the fact of the matter is corporates profits have steadily grown from 1981 to the present. Currently, corporate profits are the highest in history! Yet, unemployment remains high throughout the United States.
2. Although American middle class workers are working harder than ever before and production per individual worker has increased, the real wages of American workers have dramatically decreased and their health and retirement benefits have been virtually eliminated. Once upon a time, American corporations rewarded their workers for enabling them to make enormous profits, by giving their workers pay raises. Today, that’s no longer the case: Today, American corporation making enormous profits are more likely “to fire their works,” after making large profits. Then rehire them several months later to perform their previous jobs for lower hourly wages and less (if any) benefits.
3. Republican politicians like to say, “We (the federal and state governments) cannot continue to spend more money than we are taking in; we have to cut our spending.” However, one should notice that their spending cuts never include wasteful military spending for weapon systems our commanders in the Pentagon do not want and do not need! Moreover, the additional question which comes to my mind, whenever I hear a Republican politician say, “We cannot continue to spend more money than we are taking in” is “Why aren’t we taking in more money?” Of course the question in my mind is rhetorical because I know the answer: We are not taking in more money because we are giving it away in the form of tax breaks to rich Americans and corporations, who use government services more than any other sector of our society. (A quick research of “Government subsidies,” “earmarks,” and “defense spending for weapons and development,” and “defense spending for government contracts to companies that are making the equipment for our men and women in combat” is a good starting point towards understanding the enormous amount of profits Americans corporations are making from the very government they are accusing of wasteful spending.) Also, we are not taking in more revenues because the middle class, whose real wages have steadily declined from 1981 to the present, are consuming less products, which in turn have reduced the amount of money the federal government is receiving in sales and other taxes.
4. Analyze the economic polices of any group of republican governors, who were elected after President Reagan became the President of the United States in 1981, and you will come to realize that the majority of their economic policies are identical to Reagan’s economic plan. Excellent examples are the economic policies of Jeb Bush (Florida), Mike Huckabee (Arkansas), Haley Barbour (Mississippi), George Pataki (New York), Tom Corbett (Pennsylvania), Arnold Schwarzenegger (California), Sonny Perdue (Georgia), Tim Pawlenty (Minnesota), Mark Sanford and Nikki Haley (South Carolina), Ernie Fletcher (Kentucky), Bob Riley (Alabama), Matt Mead (Wyoming), Mitch Daniels (Indiana), John Kasich (Ohio), Matt Blunt (Missouri), Rick Perry (Texas), Mary Fallin (Oklahoma), Bob McDonnell (Virginia), Bobby Jindal (Louisiana), Chris Christie (New Jersey), Scott Walker (Wisconsin), and several others. All of them used the economic template created by President Reagan: They cut corporate taxes. They deregulate all the economic and environmental oversights/guidelines corporations wanted abolished. They cut entitlements for the poor and the middle class. They destroyed workers’ unions. Real wages in their states have experienced the sharpest decline, and the percentage of working poor or people living in poverty are the highest in their states. Yet, the blame unemployment and our stagnant economy on the democrats, who did not craft the republicans’ states and national policies.
Anyone who understands the dismal outcomes the Republican Party’s economic plans have produced can clearly understand why the republicans are keeping these negative facts from the public. However, I do not understand why the democrats and the American news media are allowing them to get away with doing so!
By
James A. Porter
