Tis The Season For The Limitless Gutter of Republican Elite Lies

Tis The Season For The Limitless Gutter of Republican Elite Lies

When it comes to the economy, too many Americans continue to be numbed by the soothing sounds of conservative spin in the media. Here are three of their more inventive claims:

1. Higher taxes on the rich will hurt small businesses and discourage job creators

A recent Treasury analysis found that only 2.5% of small businesses would face higher taxes from the expiration of the Bush tax cuts.

As for job creation, it's not coming from the people with money. Over 90% of the assets owned by millionaires are held in a combination of low-risk investments (bonds and cash), the stock market, real estate, and personal business accounts. Angel investing (capital provided by affluent individuals for business start-ups) accounted for less than 1% of the investable assets of high net worth individuals in North America in 2011. The Mendelsohn Affluent Survey agreed that the very rich spend less than two percent of their money on new business startups.

The Wall Street Journal noted, in way of confirmation, that the extra wealth created by the Bush tax cuts led to the "worst track record for jobs in recorded history."

2. Individual initiative is all you need for success.

President Obama was criticized for a speech which included these words: "If you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own...when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."

'Together' is the word that winner-take-all conservatives seem to forget. Even the richest and arguably most successful American, Bill Gates, owes most of his good fortune to the thousands of software and hardware designers who shaped the technological industry over a half-century or more. A careful analysis of his rise shows that he had luck, networking skills, and a timely sense of opportunism, even to the point of taking the work of competitors and adapting it as his own.

Gates was preceded by numerous illustrious Americans who are considered individual innovators when in fact they used their skills to build upon the work of others. On the day that Alexander Graham Bell filed for a patent for his telephone, electrical engineer Elisha Gray was filing an intent to patent a similar device. Both had built upon the work of Antonio Meucci, who didn't have the fee to file for a patent. Thomas Edison's incandescent light bulb was the culmination of almost 40 years of work by other fellow light bulb developers. Samuel Morse, Eli Whitney, the Wright brothers, and even Thomas Edison had, as eloquently stated by Jared Diamond, "capable predecessors...and made their improvements at a time when society was capable of using their product."

If anything, it's harder than ever today to ascend through the ranks on one's own. As summarized in the Pew research report "Pursuing the American Dream," only 4% of those starting out in the bottom quintile make it to the top quintile as adults, "confirming that the 'rags-to-riches' story is more often found in Hollywood than in reality."

3. A booming stock market is good for all of us

The news reports would have us believe that happy days are here again when the stock market goes up. But as the market rises, most Americans are getting a smaller slice of the pie.

In a recent Newsweek article, author Daniel Gross gushed that "The stock market has doubled since March 2009, while corporate profits and exports have surged to records."

But the richest 10% of Americans own over 80% of the stock market. What Mr. Gross referred to as the "democratization of the stock market" is actually, as demonstrated by economist Edward Wolff, a distribution of financial wealth among just the richest 5% of Americans, those earning an average of $500,000 per year.

Thanks in good part to a meager 15% capital gains tax, the richest 400 taxpayers DOUBLED their income and nearly HALVED their tax rates in just seven years (2001-2007). So dramatic is the effect that anyone making more than $34,500 a year in salary and wages is taxed at a higher rate than an individual with millions in capital gains.

There's yet more to the madness. The stock market has grown much faster than the GDP over the past century, which means that this special tax rate is being given to people who already own most of the unearned income that keeps expanding faster than the productiveness of real workers.

And one fading illusion: People in the highest class are people of high class.

Scientific American and Psychological Science have both reported that wealthier people are more focused on self, and have less empathy for people unlike themselves.

This sense of self-interest, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and other sources, promotes wrongdoing and unethical behavior.

Can't help but think about bankers and hedge fund managers.

Paul Buchheit is the founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org)

In another age a moderate conservative ( remember them) called this phenomenon voodoo economics - where you redistribute the capital produced by American labor to the top of the pyramid. Why? Well there are many reason people buy into this. One is that low to modest income conservative Republicans are obsessed with someone getting $4 in food assistance they fell they don't deserve, but do not care about the plutocrats at the top taking most of the value produced by the work they do. Working class Republicans are happy to make their plantation masters happy as long as those people over there - the nebulous other - does not get a few pennies in assistance during tough times. Tough times created by the plutocrats they vote into power. A great example of people not acting in their own rational self interests.

Conservative Evangelical Leaders Blame Liberals, Media For Aurora Shootings, Say Only Christian Victims Will Go To Heaven

Democrats Crush Republicans as Capitalists in the White House

I think its great that CNN has an affirmative action program for the brain dead, Erick Erickson Brings Fox's Bogus Small-Business Attack On Obama To CNN. And I thought Erick was going to lead the American Dish Detergent Revolution.

Why Does Herman Cain Hate America - Cain’s Sales Tax Would Hurt Consumer Spending ’For Some Years’

Cain’s Sales Tax Would Hurt Consumer Spending ’For Some Years’

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain’s plan to create a national sales tax would hurt retailers, threaten economic growth and shift the tax burden onto the middle class and poor, tax experts and business groups said.

Cain’s so-called 9-9-9 plan, which would replace the current tax code with a system of three separate taxes of 9 percent each, has boosted his popularity among voters. The former chief executive officer of Godfather’s Pizza has surged in polls in recent weeks, and a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released this week put him in the lead.

Tax experts and business groups interviewed yesterday don’t like his tax plan as much as voters. They said it would shift the burden to middle-income and poor families and would hurt sales across the economy, at least in the short term.

“There will be a noticeable decline in consumer spending for some years,” said Rachelle Bernstein, vice president of the National Retail Federation, based in Washington, in an interview. “We know that that has an impact on consumer spending and GDP.”

Consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product.

Cain has proposed a 9 percent sales tax on all goods and services, another 9 percent on personal income and the third on corporate gross income. During the debate in New Hampshire sponsored by Bloomberg News and the Washington Post on Oct. 11, Cain said the proposal is his top policy goal.

Expanding Tax Base

“It expands the base,” he said during the debate. “When you expand the base, we can arrive at the lowest possible rate, which is 9-9-9.”

That expansion means that long-standing tax breaks, such as the mortgage interest deduction and the exclusion from income of employer-sponsored health insurance, probably would vanish.

Although Cain hasn’t released extensive details of his plan, it also would probably add a sales tax on many products and services, such as new homes, financial transactions and even doctor visits. Several business and trade groups contacted by Bloomberg News declined to comment on the plan because they didn’t want to take a position on the presidential race.

Impact on States

Michael Bird, federal affairs counsel for the National Conference of State Legislatures in Washington, said the sales tax, on top of what state and local governments already levy, could make it difficult for them to adjust their tax rates.

“Would the 9 cents create a ceiling, or would states say, now we have to lower our costs because the cost of goods and services are higher than a lot of people are comfortable with?” Bird asked. “It’s hard to say.”

Robert Dietz, an economist at the National Association of Home Builders, said new homes sales would see a double tax increase. The house itself would be subject to the 9 percent retail sales tax, and then buyers would have to pay tax on the interest on their mortgage, as opposed to now when they can deduct that interest from their income.

“Layering a new tax on top of the sale of a newly constructed home would certainly be bad for the housing market,” he said. Each new home creates the equivalent of three full-time jobs for a year, he said.

Trucking Hit Hard

Small trucking firms and drivers may be hit hard by a sales tax on fuel piled upon already-high excise taxes, such as the 24.4 cent-per-gallon levy on diesel fuel and a surcharge already applied to new heavy-duty vehicles, said Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, which represents truckers under contract with larger U.S. companies such as Landstar Systems Inc.

Further taxing fuel “may be a hard sell for Mr. Cain at a time when diesel is headed back towards a $4 per gallon average,” Spencer said. “Adding a 9 percent sales tax and a 9 percent VAT (value-added tax) onto the 12 percent federal excise tax truckers already pay on new trucks and trailers would certainly cause them to think twice about buying new equipment.”

“There’s a lot in this plan that’s just kookie,” said Steve Wamhoff, legislative director at Citizens for Tax Justice, pointing out that it doesn’t tax dividends or inheritance at all, but does tax wages. “It makes the tax system much, much, much more regressive than it is today.”

The proposal would hit middle- and low-income people with a larger tax burden because they spend more of their money on food, clothing and household goods and have less left over to save and invest, which wouldn’t be taxed.

Herman and Anti-American right-wing zealot Rupert Murdoch's Fox News "likes" Herman's plan so end of story. Just disregard the facts. If conservatives started likling fact based economics we might actually pull out of this recession, but they don't want that because it doesn't benefit the cult of conservatism.

The 53 Percent Take on the 99 Percent - see photo at top of Anti-American proto-facist Erick Erickson.

But Think Progress takes their analysis a step further, looking into the claims of hardship made by Erickson:

The three jobs Erickson wants you to believe he scrapes by on include occasional paid opinion blogging at RedState.com, a lucrative television contract with CNN, and a radio gig that paid the previous host $165,183 a year…The house Erickson can’t sell? Bibb County, Georgia records reveal that Erickson just bought a new $374,900 house in February of this year, and owns another that, according to an estimate by the website Zillow, might be worth slightly less than the amount he paid for it in 2001. And it’s likely that Erickson’s CNN job alone provides him with a personal driver and covered travel expenses when he needs to appear on the show.

Interestingly, many of the claims made in the We Are the 53% blog echo those made in the We Are the 99 Percent blog: “got laid off”, “slept in my car because I couldn’t afford housing”, “after a mildly successful career, I lost everything in 2009”.

It’s not that the 53 percent people haven’t suffered, these pictures seem to say. It’s that having clawed their way out of crisis, they now see virtue in their suffering. One commenter on Think Progress site summarized the mindset:

Look at me. I ran through a field of bear traps and only had to gnaw off one limb. Builds character. 

Anti-American conservative like Erickson want America and its families to have a race to the bottom to see who can live without a living wage, food and medical care. The prize seems to be you get the title of the toughest wage slave idiot on the planet. You get to be the kind of worker they used to call serfs.