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Obama's Income Inequality Speech ("trickle down - It doesn’t work. It’s never worked.")
The Atlantic Wire ^ | 12/06/11 | Adam Clark Estes

Posted on 12/06/2011 2:00:46 PM PST by Libloather

Obama's Income Inequality Speech
Adam Clark Estes - 2:18 PM ET

**SNIP**

Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there’s been a certain crowd in Washington for the last few decades who respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If only we cut more regulations and cut more taxes – especially for the wealthy – our economy will grow stronger. Sure, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everyone else. And even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, they argue, that’s the price of liberty.

It’s a simple theory – one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. It fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It’s never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible post-war boom of the 50s and 60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade.

Remember that in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history, and what did they get us? The slowest job growth in half a century. Massive deficits that have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country and provided the basic security that helped millions of Americans reach and stay in the middle class – things like education and infrastructure; science and technology; Medicare and Social Security.

(Excerpt) Read more at theatlanticwire.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Extended News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: class; classwarfare; classwarfarespeech; economicilliteracy; income; kansasspeech; maobama; marxistattackonus; obama; obamanomics; obamaspeech; roosevelt; socialism; speech; teddy; wizardofozspeech
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Sounds like he's kicking into full leftist mode. Good.
1 posted on 12/06/2011 2:00:53 PM PST by Libloather
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To: Libloather

Ubama doesn’t work. He’s never worked.


2 posted on 12/06/2011 2:01:27 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum (Holding our flawed politicians to higher standards than the enemyÂ’s politicians guarantees they win)
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To: Libloather
The government does not “create” jobs that help our nation or economy. In fact the opposite is true. Every job the government (any government) can create costs the tax payer. What does that mean?

In the private sector, an employee either directly or indirectly provides a product or service that is valued by others. The service or produce is purchased and either consumed, used (and replaced) or sold to another for the same. Thus the cycle grows wealth and wealth increases standards of living. There is no limit to the wealth that can be created (ever). However, wealth creation has a starting point. The beneficiaries of wealth creation are those entering the job market or industry regardless of age. Eventually, and hopefully, many of those will become wealth creators themselves as they advance in society's social structure.

That is until the cycle is interrupted and those who would otherwise enter the wealth creation cycle at an entry level are plucked from the process and placed on an entitlement program that requires government worker supervision and management.

Conversely, a government job is created by paying a government worker to manage the expenditures of tax revenue for the “good of the nation.” Politicians and media elite would have you believe that hiring a government worker broadens the tax income revenue base. At what cost? If a government worker is paid $100,000/year in salary and benefits, they may pay $18,000 per year in taxes. This worker is costing the other tax payers $82,000/year.
It is hardly a good thing that the government has “added” jobs in this case.

What's worse is that the government employee produces nothing that is actually consumed or builds wealth. It is impossible for the government to “build wealth” through job creation. Indirectly, the government does make many individuals wealthy (Fannie and Freddy, Solyndra, Politicians, etc.), but at a cost to the tax paying public at large far in excess of what is made.

Wealth is only a “zero sum game” when the government intervenes and interrupts the free market capital system. Since government does not produce a consumable product or service, it can only redistribute wealth based on the revenue it collects. AND there is a cost to collecting, accounting for and redistributing this wealth that must be skimmed from the collected revenue to pay for the government management of it before it can be redistributed.
Thus government can only be a consumer of wealth, not a creator.

3 posted on 12/06/2011 2:03:18 PM PST by Tenacious 1 (Government can only be a consumer of wealth, it can not create wealth.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

I wonder what Obama would be doing in Teddy Roosevelt’s time LOL


4 posted on 12/06/2011 2:04:07 PM PST by molson209
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To: Libloather
Hey Barack!

When you buy a loaf of bread, what does the baker do with the money you pay him?
Does he eat the money?

No!
He buys more raw goods, pays his staff, pays his rent on his building and equipment, and pays his taxes.

THAT is the “Multiplier Effect” that you derisively refer to as “Trickle Down” and it works EVERY TIME IT'S TRIED!

5 posted on 12/06/2011 2:05:38 PM PST by G Larry ("I dream of a day when a man is judged by the content of his Character.")
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To: molson209

I suspect it would involve a street corner, tight pants and a little eye makeup.


6 posted on 12/06/2011 2:08:13 PM PST by Max in Utah (A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.)
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To: G Larry

nobama is such an empty-headed putz. I wonder just how much time he sits and just blankly stares at the wall? Doesn’t too much (self-admitted by nobama) use of crack cocaine do this to a person?


7 posted on 12/06/2011 2:09:16 PM PST by hal ogen (First Amendment or Reeducation Camp?)
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To: Libloather
Communism, central planning. Now those are the ideas that have the great track record.
8 posted on 12/06/2011 2:09:21 PM PST by fhayek
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To: Libloather

This man is a mirror of reality.


9 posted on 12/06/2011 2:16:54 PM PST by skeeter
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To: Libloather

30 years ago we had no Apple, no Cisco, no Google, no Yahoo!, no Microsoft, no eBay, no Amazon, no NetFlix. What is common among all these? Wealthy investors pooled their money with venture capitalists and financed all these startups (and a gazillion more). “Trickle down” is a moronic catch-phrase, but nevertheless, investment by the wealthy has created millions of new jobs in brand new industries that didn’t exist a few years ago.

O’bastard is a blithering idiot.


10 posted on 12/06/2011 2:22:56 PM PST by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: Libloather
“The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If only we cut more regulations and cut more taxes – especially for the wealthy – our economy will grow stronger.

Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It’s never worked.

How can anyone question that cutting regulations would increase productivity and job growth?

Every regulation no matter how simple to comply with cost money to comply with.

Simply documenting compliance cost a worker time that could be put to productive use. Companies spend millions every year simply paying people to sift through the Federal Register and tell them what the new regulations are and how they impact their business.

Regulations are a moving target. A company may spend millions of dollars to purchase new equipment this year and by the time the equipment is installed and tested he may no longer be in compliance. (I know a company this happened to)

Want to know a good reason for industries to move overseas. Regulations are a big one.

11 posted on 12/06/2011 2:27:33 PM PST by Pontiac (The welfare state must fail because it is contrary to human nature and diminishes the human spirit.)
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To: Libloather

So trickle-up poverty is working??


12 posted on 12/06/2011 2:33:20 PM PST by beethovenfan (If Islam is the solution, the "problem" must be freedom.)
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To: Libloather

If trickle down did not work no one would be employed...
Poor people with no money do not start businesses and hire folks....


13 posted on 12/06/2011 2:35:34 PM PST by SECURE AMERICA (Where can I sign up for the New American Revolution and the Crusades 2012?)
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To: Libloather

It is the welfare state, wealth redistribution and government dependency that is trickle down. Life is not a trickle down proposition. You have to take responsibility for your own life and your own future. Waiting for the government to send money down your way is a slow death. It stunts and suffocates real life. We are all responsible for out own happiness. The problem with the world is that people have become way too dependent on other people to trickle down life on them.
No trickle down does not and can not work.
Be independent. Be alive. Don’t expect others to provide for you. There is no hope and no life in dependency.


14 posted on 12/06/2011 2:40:53 PM PST by all the best (`~!)
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To: Libloather

Unfortunately we have always had a segment of society that was prepared to eat this rhetoric up.

I remember back in Reagan’s time a lot of them would complain that “a lot more would trickle down to us if Government would just SQUEEZE those sponges at the top!”


15 posted on 12/06/2011 2:42:37 PM PST by Buckeye McFrog
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To: SECURE AMERICA

Obama has the worldview of Government is God.

The Harvard and Berkeley people decide what is good, bad, racist, smart, economical or efficient from a lifetime-paid, pensioned and healthcare-provided perch.

The real world be damned, we need more Government workers to regulate and tax the people who actually do something, from a factory to a restaurant or a bank.

Ruling Class and their Useful Idiots vs. the Producers.


16 posted on 12/06/2011 2:46:53 PM PST by wac3rd (Somewhere in Hell, Ted Kennedy snickers....)
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To: Tenacious 1

If a government worker is paid $100,000/year in salary and benefits, they may pay $18,000 per year in taxes. This worker is costing the other tax payers $82,000/year.

The way I do the math the other tax payers pay $100,000, not $$82,000. Other tax payers paid both the net pay and the benefits and the taxes. The government worker paid N O T H I N G.


17 posted on 12/06/2011 3:01:47 PM PST by Joan Kerrey
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To: Libloather
"expensive tax cuts"

Translation: all money belongs to the federal government, and you're hoarding more than your "fair share."

18 posted on 12/06/2011 3:25:40 PM PST by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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To: Libloather
Question for anyone who had the stomach to listen to Baraq's entire speech:

When he started did he say, "It's great to be in Texas." when he was actually in Kansas? I thought I'd heard that on the radio while driving but I told myself I was mistaken. Even the president of these 58 states couldn't be that stupid.

19 posted on 12/06/2011 3:44:26 PM PST by YankeeReb
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To: YankeeReb
Not another speech--9
20 posted on 12/06/2011 3:51:07 PM PST by BobP (The piss-stream media - Never to be watched again in my house)
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