Bill Clinton should have stayed out of his wife’s presidential race and should stay out of this one as well. Obama is in enough trouble already without a popular former president, using the podium of his Global Initiative to parrot the GOP mantra of no tax increases on anybody. Great friend!
But on the issue itself; If there is going to be pain on Main street there should be pain on Wall street. We are in a national crisis and every instinct of justice and fair play dictates that everyone who is able to help kicks in. The rich are not being picked on in some sort of populist demagoguery. They are simply being asked, or even told, to get on the team and follow the rules that try to keep the game fair. For far too long we have allowed our wars to be fought by the poor, the fruits of our labor to be usurped disproportionately, and our government being taken over by a tiny, yet powerful, oligarchy of self interest.
If you have a deficit there are two solutions, cut spending and increase income. If the “Energy Industry” (read big oil and gas) continue to receive billions in government subsidy, long after the need for it has disappeared, why not use that money elsewhere where it is more needed? That is common sense. But when an army of lobbyists descends upon Capitol Hill to threaten our representatives, and all the major airwaves and media are flooded with the big loud lies of “Class warfare”, and “tax hungry politicians”, “socialism”, “job killing taxes”, and all the other non-sense, know that who you are really listening to are those who control our airwaves, our government, and our politicians with their huge amounts of money (90% of the total) and who do not seem to give a damn about the masses of ordinary people who every day contribute to corporate coffers with their purchases of higher priced food and clothing and shelter.
An economy is, or should be, a team. Nothing is produced without production workers, nothing is moved without truckers, nothing is sold without sales and customer service, nothing is built without construction workers, nothing is learned without teachers, nothing is cleaned, polished, painted, or repaired without workers. A billionaire could have no Lear jet to buy, or yacht to sail, without a whole lot of workers to build, fly, and sail them. Nothing is stored, moved, processed, organized or delivered to millions of computers, linked by an wonderfully complex internet, without hundreds of thousands of working engineers and technicians. People. Workers. Intelligence, creativity, energy, sweat.
Capital (money) is simply an economic ingredient, which by itself, is incapable of making anything. It is invested; but invested in what? If you plant it in the ground it yields nothing. Money, however, can buy. But what happens when money buys all the “real” – estate, all the land, all the raw materials, all the factories and equipment, all the inventory of goods, all of agriculture, its machinery and produce? And what if money then turns to the workers and says, if you want to live, you will do it our way, or the doors to “our” Armstrong plant in Marietta, and “our” Kellogg plant in Hempfield, and “our” Hershey plant in Hershey, will be closed to you forever. What happens then?
