If we are broke, here's why

The right wing incumbents and the 'serious' right wing media pundits, who are actually just shills of the ultra conservative Heritage Foundation, love to claim that as a country we're 'broke.' They use that line of bullshit to justify their anti worker, anti poor, and anti benefit agenda. Of course you and I know the reasons why we're 'broke' and that's because they gave the richest among us a tax break, they refuse to tax businesses fairly, we're saddled with two wars, and we're living with the failure of the war on drugs.

But for the sake of argument, let's say they're correct and we are broke as a nation. And if they are correct, in addition to the reasons I just gave, we're broke because Wall Street and big business with it's short term greed has wiped out the middle class. We're broke because the poor and working poor have no money and they have no money because big business outsourced their jobs, which once pulled them up to the middle class and enabled them to buy homes, cars, and send their kids to college, and they replaced them with hourly jobs at the Wal Mart that pay slave wages. Big business decided to invest it's money over in China, thanks in a large part to Milton Friedman and his daft economic policies, and in India, and in doing they stopped investing in America and American workers, and I include Canadians in that as well, since after all Canada is in north America. Big business decided to draw a line in the sand here in the USA to keep 'socialized medicine' out of the hands of the people and in doing so they increased the cost of doing business here which in turn gave them a reason to outsource jobs to China and India. And I have nothing but sympathy for my Chinese and Indian brothers and sisters who are now toiling like army ants to make all those cheap goods that are supposed to be resold here in our local Wal Marts and Walgreens. Those workers over there are getting the shaft as well because they're paid pennies on the dollar compared to what they'd have to pay Americans, which means they're working harder for less money to make shit that we're supposed to buy but can't because we're all out of work or underemployed so that big business can make record profits.

Another reason why we're broke is because of rising gas and food prices. They made sure we're a car dependent country and they know we all have to eat so they're raising prices to in order to make more profits and Wall Street will reward them by raising their stock price which means that the rich get richer while we all get soaked, yet again.

So what part of that economic model do you not find unsustainable? What part of the 'broke' they keep screaming about is really the case? We're fucking broke because of short term greed and colossal stupidity. The only way we can get on our feet as a nation again is for the labor movement to rise up and and take back the gains it made during the Great Depression and in post World War 2 America. In fact, it needs to go deeper than it did before. We need worker representatives on all boards of corporations. And don't tell me they can do it, they do it in Europe and other countries and it works out fine. We need to stop swallowing the right wing talking points and stop believing the lies about tax cuts and benefits. If tax cuts stimulated the economy and created jobs, then the first round of the Bush tax cuts would have prevented our current recession. They didn't of course and they never will. Tax cuts only work for the rich. What really works to create jobs are the two things right wingers and their conserva-Dem partners in crime hate:

• regulation
• and massive government investment in infrastructure.

Regulation doesn't strangle or stifle jobs, it spurs innovation and creativity, which are two tings that big business hates because of the inherent risk involved with innovating and being creative. Regulation drives innovation. And as we saw in the days of the New Deal, massive government investment means jobs that pay a living wage which means the workers have money to spend in their communities which means that businesses flourish and more people are able to buy houses, cars, and send their kids to college.

But how can we pay for a massive investment in our country when we're broke? Why we raise taxes of course. We end the Bush tax cuts and we end the wars of terror and the war on drugs. We use all that money to pay for single payer national health insurance and to put Americans back to work. And then when our economy is humming again, our tax revenues will go up and we can afford to keep doing what's needed to keep our country in the black.

And we'll keep doing it until we forget how we got prosperous and we start swallowing the lies that business needs less regulation and that taxes should be cut so the rich can create more jobs.