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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • Usually when people are asked when America was Great™ they’ll point to the burgeoning middle class of the post-war economy of the 1950s. Sometimes they’ll point to separate drinking fountains however we’ll ignore racists for now. The economic nationalists won’t like it when you point out the thriving economy was partly the result of other economies still receiving from war, but more importantly for the middle class there was a 94% marginal tax rate for income over $200,000 in 1945, which meant dollars were circulating and demand was created for more jobs. The trickle-down clowns who insistent the rich getting richer is good for the economy would be slightly more credible, if they weren’t the very same people saying the poor demanding higher wages is bad for the economy. As Nick Hanauer put it:

    We plutocrats need to get this trickle-down economics idea behind us; this idea that the better we do, the better everyone else will do. It’s not true. How could it be? I earn 1,000 times the media wage, but I do not buy 1,000 times as much stuff do I? I actually bought 2 pairs of these pants, what my partner Mike calls my manager pants. I could’ve bought 2,000 pairs, but what would I do with them? How many haircuts can I get? How often can I go out to dinner? No matter how wealthy a few plutocrats get, we can never drive a great national economy. Only a thriving middle class can do that.


  • So you agree tax cuts for the rich are bad, or do you actually believe the wealth inequality and political bribery this enables is a net good? It’s clear the trickle-down bullshit doesn’t work as evidenced by stagnant wage growth.

    I would recommend supporting progressive candidates instead of simping for the people who enacted the laws which have destroyed our middle class. Pointing out corporate Democrats exist and vote with Republicans to protect their shared donors is valid, as long as you can recognize that Republicans cry about the deficit whenever they are not in power, and when in power spend like drunken sailors, increase military spending, and continue to use the deficit they grew as a cudgel to dismantle only the parts of the administrative state they disagree with. I’m not that stupid, and I doubt you are either.



  • Trump ran budget deficits every year he was president, added trillions to the national debt with a tax giveaway to the wealthiest humans in the history of our planet, and before he was president a second time was trying to make Republicans shut down the government if the debt ceiling wasn’t eliminated entirely. Don’t hold your breath waiting for those tax cuts to trickle down, or for any cuts to ‘defense’ which is nearly half of all discretionary spending. The GOP plan is to further increase defense spending by an additional $100 billion, and $1.5 trillion in spending cuts which is not even half of their proposed $4.5 trillion tax cut. They only care about spending cuts when they can dogwhistle and lie to their base about $50 billion going to USAID just for condoms, despite their entire budget for aid to prevent foreign instability amounting to like, 3% or discretionary spending, because they have a very low estimation of their voters’ math abilities.