I listen to a lot of talk radio, and I hear a lot of people lamenting the idea that President Obama intends to redistribute the wealth in this country. Apparently the concern is that he will change the way we already redistribute wealth.
Ronald Reagan’s supply side economics, otherwise known as trickle down economics, worked quite well for this purpose.
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
In 1981, the top 1% of Americans controlled 24.8% of the wealth in the United States, and the rest of the population controlled 75.2%.
After nearly 30 years of trickle down, in 2007 the top 1% of Americans controlled only 34.6% of the wealth, while the remaining population controlled a whopping 65.4%.
Maybe it is just me, but this distribution seems to indicate that these folks are not using their gains to create more jobs.
Apparently if we give bigger tax breaks and incentives to the wealthy, they will indeed pass something along to the less well off. What they pass along is, however, in question. Money it ain’t.
Write to your elected representatives and let them know that you do not want them to change the way things work.
Let us continue the redistribution of wealth exactly the way we have been doing since Ronald Reagan was elected, rather than turning it around and passing it back to the folks who merely work for a living.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
Deregulate Now
Government regulation of any type needs to go away. Our Federal government tells businessmen, the very people who create jobs, that money they could spend on creating new jobs must be spent on various things that curtail their abilities to create the jobs we, as Americans, depend on.
For instance, companies have to spend untold billions of dollars every year ensuring that their workers have a safe working environment. If they did not have to spend this money on frivolous safety measures, imagine how many more jobs they could create.
Imagine too, how much money businesses could save every year by not being forced to pay workers extra simply because they work more than 40 hours a week. Or, for that matter, a minimum wage. Workers around the world subsist on several dollars a day; we Americans are spoiled to the point that we insist on wages that will pay our bills. Get a second job people. Put your children to work to make ends meet. Whatever you have to do. Your insistence on making a so-called living wage hurts your employer’s ability to hire more workers, thus decreasing unemployment. Also consider that if Americans didn’t insist on such high wages, if our average pay was even less than what other countries have, we would have zero problems with illegal immigration.
And there is another one: why should a businessman have to pay into a pool that continues to pay a worker even after the business no longer needs his services? If wages were kept low enough to inspire hiring, then that worker could easily obtain another job, even after losing his previous one.
Who are we to tell the food industry that they have to spend a fortune on food safety? Without this unnecessary expenditure, they could lower the price of the foods that we buy; thus enabling them to not only make a better profit, but to hire more workers. How many thousands of tons of otherwise good, edible food is thrown out every day simply because it has reached some arbitrary expiration date, or been "contaminated" with some cleaning chemical or other innocuous substance?
What about the drug companies? How many millions of dollars do the pharmaceutical companies have to spend on needless testing of new drugs? If they didn’t have to spend this money, they could then hire even more workers to produce their drugs, thus, again, cutting unemployment. This would also have the effect of lowering drug costs.
The airline industry, already saddled with astronomical losses because of 9-11 and soaring oil prices, could save billions if they could do away with all these silly regulations about how often they have to perform maintenance on their fleets.
And don’t get me started on unions. The TWU is currently in "negotiations" with American Airlines simply because the executives at AA were given millions of dollars in bonuses while the workers themselves took pay cuts. So what? Those executives went to college for the very purpose of being able to have a job with such bonuses. If the airlines and other industries could crush their unions, they could save billions upon billions of dollars in wages and perqs. These savings would allow them to not only hire more workers, but also to pay bigger and better bonuses to their executives, ensuring that they have the best and the brightest at the top.
For instance, companies have to spend untold billions of dollars every year ensuring that their workers have a safe working environment. If they did not have to spend this money on frivolous safety measures, imagine how many more jobs they could create.
Imagine too, how much money businesses could save every year by not being forced to pay workers extra simply because they work more than 40 hours a week. Or, for that matter, a minimum wage. Workers around the world subsist on several dollars a day; we Americans are spoiled to the point that we insist on wages that will pay our bills. Get a second job people. Put your children to work to make ends meet. Whatever you have to do. Your insistence on making a so-called living wage hurts your employer’s ability to hire more workers, thus decreasing unemployment. Also consider that if Americans didn’t insist on such high wages, if our average pay was even less than what other countries have, we would have zero problems with illegal immigration.
And there is another one: why should a businessman have to pay into a pool that continues to pay a worker even after the business no longer needs his services? If wages were kept low enough to inspire hiring, then that worker could easily obtain another job, even after losing his previous one.
Who are we to tell the food industry that they have to spend a fortune on food safety? Without this unnecessary expenditure, they could lower the price of the foods that we buy; thus enabling them to not only make a better profit, but to hire more workers. How many thousands of tons of otherwise good, edible food is thrown out every day simply because it has reached some arbitrary expiration date, or been "contaminated" with some cleaning chemical or other innocuous substance?
What about the drug companies? How many millions of dollars do the pharmaceutical companies have to spend on needless testing of new drugs? If they didn’t have to spend this money, they could then hire even more workers to produce their drugs, thus, again, cutting unemployment. This would also have the effect of lowering drug costs.
The airline industry, already saddled with astronomical losses because of 9-11 and soaring oil prices, could save billions if they could do away with all these silly regulations about how often they have to perform maintenance on their fleets.
And don’t get me started on unions. The TWU is currently in "negotiations" with American Airlines simply because the executives at AA were given millions of dollars in bonuses while the workers themselves took pay cuts. So what? Those executives went to college for the very purpose of being able to have a job with such bonuses. If the airlines and other industries could crush their unions, they could save billions upon billions of dollars in wages and perqs. These savings would allow them to not only hire more workers, but also to pay bigger and better bonuses to their executives, ensuring that they have the best and the brightest at the top.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Family Values
Am I the only one that finds it amusing that the Republican Party’s idea of "family values" means hiring hookers, expense account strip joints, cheating on your wife with another woman, or cheating on your wife with a man?
Apparently letting gays get married would be far more dangerous to the "sanctity of marriage" than any of these things. From all of the reports of closet gay Republican politicians, I can see why they think so.
My guess is, to their way of thinking, if it is legal for a man to marry a man, ALL men will leave their families to marry other men. This must be a Republican phenomenon, because I have to assure everyone that, no matter how legal they make it for me to marry a man, I rather like women. Even if, by some awful twist of life, my wife was to leave me, I would still not marry a man to replace her. I have to think that most folks feel this way. Maybe I am wrong.
Most folks thought their Republican Congressmen were heterosexual, God-fearing family oriented men.
To quote one of my favorite Simpson’s characters: "HA HA"
Apparently letting gays get married would be far more dangerous to the "sanctity of marriage" than any of these things. From all of the reports of closet gay Republican politicians, I can see why they think so.
My guess is, to their way of thinking, if it is legal for a man to marry a man, ALL men will leave their families to marry other men. This must be a Republican phenomenon, because I have to assure everyone that, no matter how legal they make it for me to marry a man, I rather like women. Even if, by some awful twist of life, my wife was to leave me, I would still not marry a man to replace her. I have to think that most folks feel this way. Maybe I am wrong.
Most folks thought their Republican Congressmen were heterosexual, God-fearing family oriented men.
To quote one of my favorite Simpson’s characters: "HA HA"
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