I'm a Fiscal Conservative (and a Social Liberal)

Those who advocate for (1) defunding the wars, and (2) increasing taxes on the highest incomes, are fiscally conservative.

(1) Defunding the wars means not spending zillions of dollars on bombs and transport and long-term care for injured veterans and their families.

(2) Increasing taxes on high incomes keeps Company profits in the Company, to hire more workers and/or increase productivity; letting CEOs take home obscene salaries which are effectively taxed less than middle-income wages is fiscally irresponsible, from a business AND social standpoint.

Again: low taxes on high incomes discourages fiscal responsibility; high taxes on high income encourages fiscal responsibility. I just want to help America be fiscally responsible: giving CEOs and Boards of Directors the OK loot the Company vault is NOT the way to be fiscally responsible.

Taxing the rich results in more taxes being paid by the middle class

Trickle-down economics does not work. It does not make sense that a Corporate CEO would use after-tax income to hire more workers. That money, once it leaves the Company and ends up in the CEO's pocket, is much less likely to pay for new hires than if the money were left in the Company in the first place.

You tax behavior that you want to discourage. In order to discourage exorbitant salaries given to Corporate CEOs, government should tax them at a higher rate than those with less income. If all income over $1,000,000 were taxed at 90%, then Boards of Directors would be highly reluctant to pay CEOs anything over $1,000,000. So instead of a CEO getting $100,000,000 and taking home $70,000,000, a CEO will make $1,000,000 and take home $700,000. The remaining $99,000,000 gets rolled back into the Company, to hire new workers. These workers, then, will pay taxes from their salaries. The benefit from higher taxes on the rich comes not from increased tax revenues FROM the rich; rather, the benefit comes from taxes (Income tax, State tax, Local tax, Sales tax, Gasoline tax, etc) paid by new hires.

Plus, if CEOs took home $70,000,000, they may spend $20,000,000 per year, but then put $50,000,000 into investments or trust funds, and take it out of the economy. If that money is instead spent on lower-wage workers, then they will spend $60,000,000 of that money in locally-produced services and goods, in addition to $30,000,000 in taxes, saving $10,000,000 of the original $100,000,000. So only 10% of the original $100,000,000 is stashed away when low-wage workers get it, as opposed to 50% when high-wage, low-taxed CEOs get it.

And one more benefit: employed workers pay into the entitlement programs and do not take from them, as opposed to unemployed workers who take out of entitlements and do not pay in. So funneling CEO salaries to workers reduces the deficit.

Taxing high-wage CEOs is not a way of getting more tax money from them; rather it is a way of forcing the Boards of Directors to roll that money back into the Corporation, funding jobs, and pumping more money back into the economy, and decreasing the deficit.

TV/radio/print news is The Matrix

The "Democrats and Republicans are The Odd Couple" sitcom is amusing. But that's just what The Matrix - I mean 'The Media' - is feeding us. Meanwhile, in the real world, the Corporations are skimming off our excess cash, just as in The Matrix the alien conquerors skimmed off excess body heat from entranced humans being entertained with a plausible-looking fantasy. They collected those bits of heat and concentrated them and powered their cities/manufacturing with it.

Sounds familiar.

And no, I am not Neo.

Taxing the rich results in an employed middle class

There's a misconception about the whole "tax the rich" idea as a way of increasing revenues. People think, "Instead of paying $25,000,000 on a salary of $100,000,000, CEOS will pay $90,000,000 on a salary of $100,000,000 - that's $65,000,000 more into the Treasury per CEO!"

But this would not happen. Instead, CEOs would simply not be paid $100 million if $90 million went to the government. Instead, the CEOs would be paid $1 million, and the remaining $99 million would be rolled back into the corporation to hire people, who would then earn that $99 million and pay 30% or $30 million to the government.

But you say, "That's a $35million loss! $30million vs $65million." No it's not: all those workers would not be getting unemployment checks, section 8 subsidies, etc etc. Plus, those employed workers will now go out to stores with their salaries and increase demand on other American-made products.

So increasing taxes on the rich is a way of keeping money inside corporations so they can hire workers and pay them and create demand for even MORE domestic production.

Jung b/w Racism

Poster Hecate at eschatonblog.com wrote:
Jung himself was quite the mystic.

I read Man and His Symbols and extracted bits of it, I think, as Jefferson did with the New Testament and the sayings of Jesus. I was just constantly wishing, "Could you PLEASE just list the Archetypes for me, please?" Maybe that was part of his mysticism, that you had to get to his inner circle before the Archetypes were revealed. And maybe it was revealed that he thought Archetypes were a gift from the Creator, and not a byproduct of the architecture of the human brain (which is how *I* see it).

And there's nothing mystical about racism, etc.

Oh yes there is: Many people think that blacks/browns are "lower on the evolutionary ladder" and are "closer" to chimps/baboons, and hence, like the chimps have no soul. "No blacks in Heaven and God doesn't care one way or the other."

And have you seen a KKK rally or a re-creation? TOTALLY mystical with the symbols and the chanting and the frenzy.

Bury Your Head In The Sand

“A financial crisis by definition is a sharp abrupt, unexpected decline in asset prices.” So says Alan Greenspan.

In the jargon of MBAs and Economists, perhaps. But in American households, a "financial crisis" is oftentimes cause by the lack of revenue and/or reckless spending. It's easy to look at one's bank account and say, "At this rate, we will be broke in three months."

I'll bet if you looked at America's balance sheet, Alan, you would be able to predict when revenue (taxes) would be surpassed by spending (on wars and bailouts). But I understand why you would not dare to look at America's balance sheet: plausible deniability.

Ignore The Men Behind The Curtain

Poster enoanon at eschaton writes:

The right wing has to have a genius mechanism to perpetuate itself. And they do. They can destroy the American middle class, and as that class watches their lives be destroyed, they turn on each other.

It's not just the right wing. The Corporate Media - most of the major cable and all of the broadcast outlets - portrays Republicans and Democrats as "The Odd Couple" and brings us a new episode every day. They perpetuate the myth that Rs and Ds should be at each others' throats because the opposite party is so infuriatingly stupid. But the thing is, the REAL story is that Americans should be united against the Corporate Executives who have captured the Media and DC politicians.

Ds and Rs have much more to unite them than divide them, but their choices of "news" outlets give them biased, charicatured pictures of "the other side".

I truly would not be surprised if in some sumptuous wood-paneled club right now, a clot of four billionaires are drinking snifters of brandy, smoking cuban cigars and laughing at the whole thing.

Those four will always be there and will always be laughing, whether or not middle class families are struggling. Turn away from those four, and focus instead on the hundreds of Media Producers and DC Politicians. If these hundreds can be rehabilitated or replaced, then those four laughing billionaires will not be fucking with America's representative democracy and America's free press.