The Devil's Advocate

The Sea of Abandoned Text

2010-02-19T15:50:00.000-08:00

I'm going to go out on a limb and estimate that there are more pages of text not written on all the abandoned 'blogs on the Internet than in all the books not written by all the unpublished authors in the history of the world.

Ok, maybe not... But it sounded good.

So. In the long, long, long time since I've been back to this one, I've been a) posting on my LJ one (and not much of that in the past half year), b) reading WAY too much (the only way to read too much, by the way, is to read stuff you'd rather put down in favor of reading something else) c) working on spinning up several of my own projects that I couldn't pursue while I was on my two year long walkabout, but have no really good excuse for not dong now, and d) squirming like a pinned bug while Facebook eats every unguarded waking moment of my life.

I'm not sure how to handle cross-posting from other projects - I'll likely just post links. I'm not sure abut this one, anyway, since basically nobody even knows this one is here. Guess I'll decide when the time comes.

For now...

Republican Lies I'm Sick Of...

2008-09-27T11:48:00.000-07:00

Over the course of the next few weeks, I'll be porting related entries from my other (personal) 'blog... Some in order, but some, I'm sure, not. I'll try to date them with the same publication date as they held there. "Current" posts will probably be just mixed in.

With any luck, though, it won't be a bad mess. It's all related, even if not as topical as when it was first posted.

So... The economy sucks, and we're hemorrhaging jobs - If I remember correctly, population growth and other factors give us an estimate that we need to grow about 600,000 jobs a year to keep the economy (and the people it's composed of) well fed, but we're losing about 50,000 jobs per month.

So what's the solution? Why, lower taxes on business, of course!

Republican politicians will tell you, and their parrots will echo, at the drop of a hat, that lowering taxes on business is the only way to grow jobs.

This. Is. Retarded.

Lowering business taxes does not create jobs. Lowering taxes on the general population creates jobs.

Let's see...

Business taxes are levied on profits. Profits are a function of sales. Sales are a function of production and demand. Demand is a function of brand/quality, availability (supply), and price. Price is, generally, a function of the balance of supply and demand.

It's all a big push-me-pull-you. If demand increases, you either increase production or price. If demand decreases, you reduce price, reduce production, or try to increase brand/quality, usually by means of advertising. And so on, and so on.

So... What are the reasons you might hire more people...? There's only one. You're not able to meet current or projected demand for your product. That's it.

So what if there's a higher profit margin because they're not paying as much in taxes...? How likely is it that they'll hold a company meeting and announce "It looks like we've made about 10% more in profits than we were expecting, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to hire more full-time workers, at the same wages, and everyone can just work about 10% less hard. Everyone please remember to leave ten minutes early from now on, and I don't want to see anyone stroll in before 9.15 in the morning."

Republicans expect us to believe that, if corporate owners find some extra money in the till at the end of the day, they're going to do something with it besides smile and take it home.

Lowering taxes on business increases the net income of business owners. "What?!?" you say, "Republican politicians pushing policies that will increase the wealth of the wealthy...? Why, that's shocking!"

"No, no, no!" they tell us. "You're missing the whole point!"

"If we give these poor, poor business owners - crushed under the weight of the largest business taxes in the world - a small tax break, they'll invest that money into expanding their business! That's how they'll create more jobs!"

Wait... Let's look again. You can't expand without demand. If there's not someone 'over there' who's willing and able (and, preferably, desiring) to buy your product or service, it'll do you no good to expand 'over there'.

And, believe me... If there are people 'over there' who are willing and able and desiring (or not) to buy a product, neither hell nor high water nor business taxes are going to stop a business from expanding. Doubt it? Go to outer Mongolia and buy yourself a Coke and a Big Mac.

If they want to expand... They will. They can already afford it. They're rich*. If they don't have the cash on hand, they'll borrow it. Happens every day. What's not going to prove a make-or-break difference on whether or not they expand into a new market is certainly not a few percentage points of profit paid or not paid in taxes.

Any taxes they have to pay will be figured into the cost of the expansion, and into the price of the product. They're good at this kind of stuff. They're businesses. They have accountant homeboys who can figure it all out without breaking a sweat.

You can't expand without demand.

So, how do we create more demand in the marketplace? Reduce the tax burden of workers... Lower and middle classes. Give a rich person a tax break, and they'll phone the broker, buy some real estate, maybe spend another week in Paris every year. Give a poor person a tax break, and they'll spend every penny of it in the domestic marketplace**. Which means higher demand for retail level goods and services... Which means more jobs in production, retail, transportation, and myriad other connected markets and industries.

Wealth never ever trickles down... It only 'evaporates' up.

History shows us, quite clearly, that under "Democratic" economic and domestic policies, the working classes do much, much, much better than they do under "Republican" policies, and, with all those working class folks spending their paychecks, the "rich" do quite well under "Democratic" policies as well.

While it's true that the "rich" do even better - amazingly, astoundingly so*** - under "Republican" policies, the poor do catastrophically worse, and the middle classes slowly dissolve into new poor. Worse, the Republicans - and the wealthy who support them financially - seem unable to see that, without a middle class to feed on, they'll soon be left to eating their own young.

Or, perhaps, the concept just doesn't much bother them.

After all... Once you've got a really nice level of wealth, there's hardly any such thing as "bad times"... Especially in the modern market. Short selling sub-prime mortgages netted savvy wall Streeters hundreds of billions... And, if the housing market really crashes, those with massive liquid assets will simply be in a position to bulk up on real estate holdings at bargain basement prices.

That's all an economic crash really means, usually... The poor starve, the middle become poor, and the very wealthy pick up the morsels that the upper middle drop on their way down.

Perhaps the reason this particular Republican lie bothers me so much is not simply because it's a lie... Both parties do plenty of that. It's that it's such an obvious lie, so easy to see around, and yet so few people bother to even look.

Saying that tax breaks for corporations create jobs is like saying that charging those who eat the most less for meals creates food.

_{* Yes. Of course, there are 'business owners' who aren't rich. I'm sorry to have to say it, but business taxes or no business taxes, they're probably not going to be the ones expanding. If they have a fantastic idea, but don't have the credit or capital to really expand on it, it won't be long at all until you see someone who is rich creating and expanding a knock-off in another market. Welcome to capitalism.

** Never mind that most of the product in the domestic marketplace came from Mexico and China... That's another subject.

*** The US "Wealth Gap" - the average economic distance between the rich and the poor - has skyrocketed under the current administration, even more than it always does under Republican rule. In 2007, 10 Americans earned a combined income of over $16 billion - more than the GDP of some countries - while most jobs paid less than $10/hr and the economy was beginning to grind to a halt. I can't find the reference now, but if I remember correctly, the wealth of the top one half or one tenth of one percent has grown over 600% while the bottom fifty (?) percent have enjoyed a net decrease of something like 45%. Naturally, if anyone has the reference I can't find, I'd appreciate a link.}

Death to Right Wing Surrender Monkeys!

2007-09-08T15:32:00.000-07:00

"I understand that there are people who disagree, people who are ready for the troops to come home. The President strongly believes that setting a date for surrender is not the way to do that." - White House Press Briefing by Dana Perino

"Let’s not play semantics. Redeploy is another word for surrender, retreat... Retreat! Surrender! Give up!"" - Sean Hannity, who has never served in the military

"This is cut and run, surrender without the words." - Rush Limbaugh, who has also never served in the military

Counterpoint...

"Having been attacked by al Qaeda, for us now to go bombing Iraq in response would be like our invading Mexico after the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbour." Richard Clark, former Chair of the Counter-terrorism Security Group, United States National Security Council ("Anti-Terrorism Czar")

"In the days following those terrible attacks, the country's pain and despair were quickly replaced with a steely resolve to bring those responsible to justice. The world stood by our side, ready to join us in this effort.

"But before he'd finished the job of destroying al Qaeda, President Bush chose a different path, misleading us into an ill-planned war in Iraq...

"Our military is not to blame for those setbacks. The men and women who serve us in uniform have met every challenge and surpassed every goal with remarkable courage. These are President Bush's failures - and it is long past time for him to change his flawed policies." Senator Harry Reid, D, Nev

As a military veteran, and as a reasonable person, I am quite tired of people or the right saying that to leave Iraq would be "surrender". I'm also quite tired of people, left or right, saying we've lost there.

Our military did not lose, and coming home is not "surrender".

They went in to a country with a hostile dictator, and they removed him. They defeated his army, removed his political apparatus, and captured him personally. That's it. They won. Game over. At the risk of putting too fine a point on it, they kicked ass.

Now, we have valiant soldiers in a distinctly non-military mission, attempting to do police work in a country not their own.

The "mission" was to free Iraq from the grasp of a dictator. Are there other dictatorships in the region we would have been better to "free"? Absolutely. Of course. Would it have been better to stick to our stated and justified goal of finding and crushing Bin Laden and Al Qaeda? Absolutely. Of course.

Those "woulda, coulda, shoulda" considerations aside, our soldiers have done the job they were sent to do. They've performed valiantly and without hesitation or complaint. They've won. Now, bring them home, take impeccably good care of them, and let anyone who's only idea of "supporting the troops" is to expose them to further peril for no honorable cause be denounced as the lying traitors they are.

There are absolutely risks to our leaving Iraq. At the risk of an indelicate illustration, there are risks as any child matures and grows and seeks it's way in the world... And this is a very young government, but in a very old culture. It's insulting and improper and more than a little imperialistic for us to hover over them, unwelcome, and dictate to them how to reform their society.

Of course it's justifiable and honorable to render some needed assistance to the new government of Iraq, and we should be prepared to render reasonable assistance to them as needed... As they request it, first and foremost. We should make the greatest efforts to be good allies with this new government, and neighboring states should be informed without question that we will rise to their defense if their position is compromised by opportunistic efforts in the region.

The 'war' is over. Let's come home. Before we can support this new state, we must allow it to become a new state in fact.