The reaction by right winger’s to the killing of Osama bin Laden was absolutely predictable. “Where’s the body?” “This puts more American lives in danger.” “The military acted on its own and Obama deserves no credit.” These were the typical nay-saying responses from a group of people that won’t give President Obama credit for doing anything unless they think it’s bad. From a distance, it’s laughable, but when examined more closely for the larger trend it represents, it explains exactly why it is that this country can’t get its act together: a huge number of people do not accept or do not receive accurate information, and because of it, our country fail’s to think, act, and vote rationally. Nearly all of this misinformation and failure can be attributed to Republican politics.
The most egregious example of this trend in American politics is probably the right wing’s refusal to accept climate change. Scientific evidence, from atmospheric carbon levels to disappearing glaciers to warmer average temperatures to extreme weather, is abundant, and about as in-your-face as you can get. Yet conservatives continue to refute, misinform, and bloviate on this topic. And because of that, we’ve done nothing in this country to address the causes or effects of climate change.
The problem is this complete lack of basic knowledge, the inability of conservatives to accept plain truths, extends far beyond climate change. Heard of the “birthers?” The people who believe that Obama is not even a citizen of this country—that in spite of the CIA, the FBI, and all the other security organizations in this country—that somehow Obama escaped their scrutiny to become an “illegitimate” president. It’s an absolute joke, and yet, 51% of Republicans believe that our President was not born in this country.
Far worse are the articles of faith in Republican economics, such as: “let the market solve our problems,” “regulations prevent profitability,” “tax cuts create jobs,” “tax increases kill jobs,” “corporations are too highly taxed in the U.S. compared to other countries,” “private business is always more efficient than government run programs,” and “wealth redistribution is counter productive.” These are all ideas that many people, not just Republicans, believe as unquestionable truths, and yet, every one of them can be proven false if one looks at data from the last twenty years.
1) The market doesn’t solve all of our problems—it only solves the problems that people are willing to pay to have solved. In other words, only problems where there is profit to be had will ever be addressed by the market. Moreover, this does not mean that letting the market decide is good. Consider the insurance market for medicine: my own sister cannot be covered even though she is a health young woman in her 20's, and in related news, just yesterday Blue Cross in Oregon announced that they will be raising rates on individuals by 22% starting in August. This is the market at work, and in some cases, it just doesn't.
2) Regulations may provide certain barriers or problems for businesses, but a lack of regulations and/or oversight can have horrible results that cost jobs and are far worse, in the long run, for the economy—consider the recent Wall St. crash in 2008 that completely tanked our economy, or the oil spill in the gulf that has cost the people in that region billions in lost revenues from the hit to the tourism and fishing industries.
3) If tax cuts created jobs, we should have an unemployment rate near 5%, not 10, because the effective tax rate in the U.S. for both business and individuals is about as low as it has been in recent memory. On the flip side, when Clinton increased taxes on the wealthy, the economy did just fine, growing rapidly in fact, until deregulation and 9-11 caused Wall St. to crash again in 2000.
4) The idea that corporations are taxed too heavily in the U.S. is laughable. While the highest marginal corporate tax rate is high at 35%, almost no company actually pays that rate. There are literally thousands of deductions available to any business large enough to hire an accountant, and many of the largest U.S. companies pay zero in taxes, or worse, are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.
5) Government run health care, in the form of Medicare, delivers care more efficiently and for a far lower cost than private insurance. And imagine what would have happened if Social Security had been privatized and put in the hands of Wall St. to manage: all of that money would be gone when the banks failed in 2008. The government can and currently does do many things better that the private market. That is a fact.
6) Income redistribution, in the form of forcing corporations and the richest Americans to pay higher tax rates, would actually do a lot of good. Part of the reason we’re in such bad economic straights is that people in the lower and middle class are running out of money. The richest 1% of families in this country own more wealth than the bottom 50% of all Americans. Given that 67% of our economy is based on consumer spending, it is not good that so much of our nation’s wealth is held by so few hands.
Ultimately, all of this will come crashing to down at some point. One can ignore the truth, but like it or not, the truth still exists. Republicans can sit there and claim that a pot of boiling water isn’t hot, but they’re still going to burn their hand if they put it in the water. They can continue to deny climate change, but it’s happening, and it is going to have dramatic consequences at some point if we refuse to do anything about it. They can continue to believe Obama isn’t a legitimate President, but he’s running in 2012 whether they like it or not, and he’s going to win that election because they have a stable of idiots running on their side. And if we continue, as a country, to legitimize and enact trickle-down economic policy; if we continue to allow the rich to take their money and run; if we continue to make it possible for corporations to send jobs overseas and receive tax cuts for doing so, we’re going to be hosed. Because at some point, people aren’t going to have any money left, and then who are GM going to sell their cars to? Who’s going to buy GE washing machines? Who’s going to buy houses and reinvigorate the construction industry? There won’t be anybody—there won’t be any customers! Consider what Henry Ford said about business: “There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.” Where is that spirit from our entrepreneurs and business leaders today?
The final question is whether U.S. voters will make the rational choice? The plain fact is that Republicans are wrong about how to run a government and how to manage an economy. They are simply bad at governing. On top of that, they don’t have the best interests of America at heart—and every time they lie about, distort, or spin the facts, they're effectively stabbing every American citizen in the back.
Just think about the last election, they came in crowing about jobs, and then what was the first thing they did? Nearly force a government shutdown so that they could hack down the size of the federal government. What is the first thing Republican governors did? Curtail the right to collectively bargain for public employees and then cut their jobs and wages. And now we have the budget plan from Republican Paul Ryan, which might be best summarized as trickle-down, reverse Robin Hood economics on steroids. But the question remains: will Americans make the rational choice when they go to the voting booths in 2012? Because unless they vote for huge Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, nothing is going to get done as usual, and the Republicans are going to force their mythical philosophies and beliefs down our throats as much as possible.
Rest assured, it will end eventually—the question is how bad is has to get before Americans learn that they can’t believe their way to a better tomorrow. Only a country that makes rational decisions based on facts can survive in this 21st century.
What can you do? You have to confront people that hold these irrational thoughts. You have to establish the truth and embarrass people that will sit there and spread ideas that are simply untrue. It is not easy, but if every rational American made a real effort to stop this nonsense, it would go a long way toward ending this era of irrationality.
No comments:
Post a Comment