Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 01:43 pm
For most human beings, even idiots in America, there are just some things that are glaringly self-evident such as every day the Sun will rise in the East. One would like to believe that most Americans, even the idiots, surely comprehend that there are some economic policies that automatically produce deleterious results such as taking everything from the poor and middle class and giving it to the richest one-percent and expecting the entire population to become billionaires and the economy to flourish.
That insane concept, known as Republican trickle-down economics, has consistently failed to produce any benefits, economic or otherwise, to the nation’s economic health or 98% of the population. Although it is in no way a revelation, the world’s leading economic organization, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has finally conducted comprehensive research and reported what every conscious human being on Earth already knows like they know the Sun rises in the East; GOP trickle-down economics is a certifiable economic disaster that reliably retards economic growth, kills jobs, and increases income inequality.
The International Monetary Fund was created specifically to reduce poverty around the world, secure financial stability for all nations, promote high employment, and advance policies that ensure sustainable economic growth long into the future. The IMF’s purpose as an organization is contrary to conservative economics because it does not focus on creating more wealth for the already uber-rich or their highly-profitable corporations. The IMF was created in 1945 and is governed and accountable to the 188 countries that make up its near-global membership. It was America that conceived the idea of an international organization that would develop a framework for economic cooperation between the world’s nations to avoid a repetition of circumstances that contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s; circumstances Republicans continue promoting today without pause.
It is telling that regardless of the IMF or America’s intent in the late 1940s to avoid another devastating depression, including knowing exactly what not to do, Bush Republicans embraced “trickle down” economics and increased the number of poor Americans, decimated the middle class, retarded economic growth and crashed the nation’s economy. Now, just six years removed from the Bush-created Great Recession, the IMF issued a warning that the concept of trickle-down economics not only increases the number of people in poverty, it is a major obstacle to economic growth and obviously increases income inequality.
In a new study conducted by IMF researchers, they report something that, apparently, everyone on the face of the Earth knows except America’s Republican Party and their wealthy conservative funders; trickle-down economics are disastrous for any nation’s economy. IMF researchers also found that the primary feature of trickle-down economics, gross income inequality, not only “hollows out the middle class” and devastates “the poorest 20% of the citizenry,” it is the death knell for economic growth and a substantial majority of the population.
The IMF’s report focused on the idea that trickle-down economics, and the income inequality it fosters, is always bad, but it is especially bad for the people in the middle class and those on the lowest rung of the income ladder. The organization’s recommendation to spur economic growth, besides completely abandoning the concept of trickle down as sheer folly and an economic death wish, is helping the poorest 20% of the population by “raising the income share of the poor, and ensuring that there is no hollowing-out of the middle class.”
Preserving the middle class and raising the incomes of the poor is frankly something the IMF, real economic experts, President Barack Obama, Democrats, and any half-wit understands “is actually good for a nation’s economic growth.” The IMF report went farther than just condemning ‘trickle down’ as bad for everyone but the rich, the organization dismissed the entire concept of “trickle-down economics” and advanced the President’s belief that “the poorest 20% of citizens should make more money;” something Republicans reject out of hand as absurd and patently unfair for the richest one percent and their corporations. Republicans have demonstrated time and again that they could not care less that their absurd economic policy contradicts the blunt declaration of the IMF’s report that “an increase in the income share of the bottom 20% is associated with higher GDP growth” and greater economic stability, because they are only interested in increasing the income share of the rich that will never be sufficient until they have it all.
The IMF’s recommendations for economic prosperity are anathema to Republicans who have fought tooth and nail against proposals President Obama, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, and all Democrats have called for without pause; more investment in health, higher wages, and further progressive taxation. The study found that, “Fiscal policy already plays a significant role in addressing income inequality in many advanced economies (that are not America), but the redistributive role of fiscal policy could be further reinforced by greater reliance on wealth and property taxes, more progressive income taxation, removing opportunities for tax avoidance and evasion, and smarter targeting of social benefits.”
The IMFs recommendations for economic growth, and condemnation of Republican trickle down as damaging to an economy and a population, are not untested theories or conjecture. A quick look at Republican states that imposed harsh trickle down policies reveal that not only are states like Kansas, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Louisiana in dire financial straits, the people are suffering and getting poorer by the day. Not only do Republicans oppose rolling back regressive taxation that favors the rich, they have further taxed the poorest citizens in an attempt to plug gaping budget holes created by severe revenue shortfalls; shortfalls due to tax cuts for the wealthy and lack of spending by the poor who earn slave wages and face Draconian cuts to social benefits.
The IMF researchers could have saved themselves time, and certainly some expense, in reporting on the damage ‘trickle down’ wreaks on an economy by pointing out the Republican addiction to the failed policy that decimated America’s economy in eight short years of the Bush administration. If that was too old to be relevant, and it is not, then the world organization could have cited the current economic catastrophes unfolding in Republican-governed states such as Kansas, although there are many, many others, that is clinging to trickle down in spite of the damage to their economies and their constituents.
Recently, in a futile attempt to cover gross revenue shortfalls created by outlandish tax cuts for the rich, several Republican governors and legislatures have furthered the dire economic plight of the bottom 20% and middle class by instituting seriously regressive taxation targeting those who can least afford even one more economic attack; the poor and middle class. It is not that Republicans in the states, and Congress for that matter, do not know their precious trickle down agenda is retarding economic growth, killing job creation, and creating hardships for the poor, they just could not care less. Based on the imbecile residents who continue voting trickle down Republicans in office, it appears that many Americans could care even less that Republicans are crushing the economic life out of them.
One would like to think that all it would take for Republicans to see the incredible error of their trickle down economic agenda and damage to their constituents well-being is to read the latest IMF report. However, it is not like there is anything new in the international economic organization’s findings that are not in the history books going back to the New Deal, or the period directly following World War II when Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower instituted progressive taxation that created America’s great middle class and drove economic growth the likes the world, or America, has never seen before or since then.
It is a sad state of affairs for this country’s economy and the majority of its citizens that it now appears that everyone on Earth understands the folly of the Republican ‘trickle down” economic theory. The truth is that at this juncture the only people on Earth who refuse to admit that their precious ‘trickle down’ is a recipe for economic demise, greater income inequality, economic devastation, and high unemployment, low wages, and an increased poverty are Republicans. It is also a sad truth that Republicans do, in fact, know their only economic agenda is disastrous for all but the richest one-percent and their corporations, they just refuse to admit it in a public forum where voters might hear them laughing about an economic agenda the whole world knows is a raging failure and yet is still popular among America’s incredibly stupid Republican voters.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
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