September 05, 2010 08:03 PM UTC

Finally Seeing The Light

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• by: harrydoby

(Veteran polster Harry Doby seems the light and admits the right wing noise machine is right — we need to stop whining about getting people back to work and cut taxes for the super rich again.  I can only assume he’s serious;-) – promoted by Voyageur)

Reading for oh, maybe the 100th time, that Keynesian fiscal stimulus was a terrible mistake, and was powerless to offset the  economic collapse of 2008/2009, the arguments are finally making sense to me with their elegance and simplicity.

I’ve decided that economic models showing annual deficits in the $2 trillion range, and unemployment reaching high double-digits is just so much cynical fear-mongering meant to get Libs elected into office.

In a new paper, the economists argue that without the Wall Street bailout, the bank stress tests, the emergency lending and asset purchases by the Federal Reserve, and the Obama administration’s fiscal stimulus program, the nation’s gross domestic product would be about 6.5 percent lower this year.

In addition, there would be about 8.5 million fewer jobs, on top of the more than 8 million already lost; and the economy would be experiencing deflation, instead of low inflation.

If the fiscal stimulus alone had been enacted, and not the financial measures, they concluded, real G.D.P. would have fallen 5 percent last year, with 12 million jobs lost. But if only the financial measures had been enacted, and not the stimulus, real G.D.P. would have fallen nearly 4 percent, with 10 million jobs lost.

The reality is that if we had instead adopted the Laissez-faire approach of doing nothing and letting the economy’s natural free-market forces take over, we’d be in much better shape.

Renowned Mississippi economist and free thinker, William F. Shughart II (after all he’s a jolly good fellow with the Independence Institute) prescribes the cure for our economic ills is to simply cut taxes and eliminate regulation.  Thus in one fell swoop, this frees up money for the top 1% on the economic ladder to spend more freely on things that matter – bigger homes (thus fueling a revival in the housing market), fancier jets (thus spurring the aerospace industry) and once and for all answering the question, is a 400-foot yacht big enough?

And by unshackling businesses from pesky regulations, such as forcing companies to fill out government forms  regarding how many people were injured on the job each year, how much land was contaminated by their industrial spills, or filling out environmental impact studies on why they want to develop pristine federal lands, we should just let companies decide where to best invest their windfall profits, spurring a new “Oklahoma Land Rush”, but in this case, all around the nation for all the currently wasted billions of acres of Federal lands – you know, empty deserts, national wildlife refuges and national parks – economic wastelands, all!

The other benefit of cutting taxes and eliminating regulations is that we wouldn’t need much government anymore.  And since the real decision-making and power would lie in the hands of just a few CEO’s, we wouldn’t need much more than a figurehead President, and Congress could practically disband, or at most, simply become an advisory “business roundtable” to help the Koch brothers determine where to focus their job creation activities.

Speaking of jobs, encouraging the wealthy to create high-paying non-union jobs is pretty smart.  We all know it’s better to take unemployment and welfare benefits from the government rather than pay income taxes.  So by cutting or eliminating taxes, people will finally decide to take all those $100k non-union jobs that currently go begging (or worse, get filled by illegal immigrant drug dealers) rather than pay $10k to $20k in taxes each year on that salary.

For the workers that don’t have the smarts or gumption for the top paying jobs, the ruling oligarchy would reach back to the ’50’s for inspiration.  Oh, not the 1950’s – I mean the 1850’s — when we had company towns where employees were provided housing, jobs, places to shop, etc. And instead of using expensive government currency, the companies printed their own, much more economically efficient scrip, redeemable only at company-owned stores, thus keeping the money exclusively with the company and the local economy.  This increases company profits and thus creates even more jobs.  Plus this had the added benefit of preventing “outside” influences on employees tempted to travel out of town to spend their money supporting potential rivals that might be employing cheap foreign labor.

And since farming was such a big factor of the economy back in the 1850’s, we would do well to emulate the model practiced mainly in the South back then.  Again, folks were well taken care of and didn’t have any economic worries because every possible need was taken care of by benevolent plantation owners.  Free healthcare, plenty of food, guaranteed lifetime employment, and you didn’t have to worry about managing your money or dealing with banks and loans and such because money wasn’t used at all.

Yessiree, today’s GOP and their economic advisers are right – we’d be much better off if we left the hard thinking and decision-making to the wealthy few, and we just focused on working really, really hard at whatever they tell us to do.