There are currently two schools of thought on reducing the deficit. The first is to actually reduce the deficit in a meaningful way, by letting Bush's tax giveaway to the top 2% expire. "You have to pay your bills; you can't keep borrowing from the rest of the world at that magnitude, year after year after year. So in light of all of those facts, I say we can't afford the Bush tax cuts," says former Reagan budget director David Stockman. The gap between the very rich and everyone else grew dramatically under George W. Bush, with all the benefit going to the very wealthy -- who, by the way, are also the ones who ran the economy off the cliff with crazy get-richer-quick schemes."Two years after the crisis on Wall Street, it has been announced that bonuses this year will be $144 billion -- the highest in history," Stockman points out. "That's who's gonna get this tax cut on the top, you know, 2 percent of the population. They don't need a tax cut. They don't deserve it. And therefore, what we have to do is focus on Main Street."
Of course, the other school of thought on deficit reduction is to pretend to reduce the deficit with penny-pinching plans that punish everyone but the rich. But keep those tax cuts for the top earners, because to do anything else just wouldn't be fair. Taking from you to give to some Wall Street suit is apparently "fair." Raising the retirement age for Social Security, for example, screws you pretty bad, but it's not much of a hit to Mr. Moneybags here. But worse, it also hurts you more by making the job market more competitive. The principle of supply and demand dictates that this will drive wages down -- another loss for you, but a win for Moneybags who likes the cheap labor. In other words, you pay a penalty for being responsible and you pay it to the economic kamikaze pilots on Wall Street. I'm with Stockman here, they don't deserve the tax cuts and they don't deserve a bite out of your piece of the pie...[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
