It's The Economy:                                                                     Back
 
   Are taxes on the rich really class warfare? Maybe, but if they are who started the war? 
   For the last decade or longer we've seen the top CEOs taking huge wage increases while at the same time holding down the wages of the average worker. They have been cutting the work force by laying off employees or outsourcing jobs, negotiating with unions not only for lower wage increases but in some cases cuts. The rich have been getting richer while the average workers have, if they haven't been working longer or taking second jobs, been remaining the same or even loosing real income.
   This is all about power. When your talking of income in the millions, your talking about money you can never spend & if you are taking money that you can't really use while at the same time holding down your employees it can only be about power. The richer you are the more dependent, on you, your employees become.
   Take for example the slave owners. The slaves had to depend on the masters for everything in their lives, Food, lodging, medical care, everything. Do you really think that Ken Lay doesn't get a feeling of power from the control he has over the lives of the employees of Enron.
 
   I keep hearing that giving tax breaks to the wealthy will create jobs. Let me ask you a question. Put yourself in a situation where you own a business. It doesn't matter if your creating a product for sale or selling a service. You aren't making money because your product isn't selling or people aren't using your service.
   Along comes the government with a tax break for you. Are you going to make more products that are going to sit on a shelf, maybe at an expense to you or are you going to hire more people who are going to sit around with nothing to do because people aren't using your service.  I don't think so. I know what I'd do with the money. I'd buy land or invest it. What I wouldn't do is pay someone for doing nothing.
   Now give that same tax break to a middle or lower class person and they might buy that product, or use that service, and in that way create the jobs by making the business owner hire enough people to meet the demand for the products or services they are supplying. The lower and middle class catch a break & because they own a new product or have had a service performed for them, the business owners have made money because they have sold products or earned money by doing a service and if they have done or sold enough then jobs will have been created.
 
   Now the administration is boasting about the job growth that the tax cuts have produced. What they neglect to tell us is that since these new jobs are on average $9,000 a year less then the ones that were lost, the money for them, could well have come from the cuts in pay of the average worker.
   If the economy is doing so good, why is the amount of bankruptcy at the highest level ever.
 
   I recently heard George Bush at a rally in, I think it was Ohio, (talking about outsourcing) say that "The American worker can, if given a fair playing field, compete with anyone in the world." or something like that. That's great and true but where has that fair playing field been. The laws & restrictions are there but in the past four years they haven't been enforced. China, for one, has been notorious for subsidizing it's businesses & that shows up in our enormous trade deficit.
   If we keep outsourcing our jobs who will have the money to buy the products that come back into this country? They may cost less but if your not working, where are you going to get the money to buy them? Are we going to become a third world country?   CNN has a List of companies exporting jobs
   The Bush administration advocates outsourcing. Kerry wants to stop the tax breaks that American Companies get when they outsource & give them as incentives to companies that keep our jobs here. Makes sense to me.
   I heard someone say that by passing NAFTA we would gain because then Mexico would upgrade their manufacturing base, start to export & with their extra income pay their workers better wages. Then the richer Mexicans would start to buy American T. V.s, Cars, etc. & our economy would grow. Get with it. the large companies in Mexico are just like ours. Cheap! they'll just a soon give their employees a raise as jump off a bridge, and they don't have the labor laws we have here. What they have done is put the profits in their pockets. Just look at our trade deficit with Mexico.
   To see a good example of how well NAFTA worked out, just look to our borders. If the Mexican job market improved so much how come so many Mexicans are trying to come here for jobs, after all they take only the jobs that American's won't. Maybe we should raise the minimum wage so that Americans would take those jobs. 
 
   What effect will the massive national debt that this administration has created have in the future economy? When you borrow money you eventually have to pay it back.& usually with interest. Paying it back takes funds from other areas. The legislative branch of our government will have to decide which programs will be cut. It also means the government has less money to lend to the financial institutions, which in turn means they have less capitol to make loans with, they will then decide who will get a mortgage (Which will be at a higher rate then at present & which will slow the real estate market & building industry) or which small business will get the loan they need to upgrade. (This will slow down the economic growth & create less jobs). Ah! but that's in the future, why are we worrying about it now.
  
   How come the economy isn't growing like a weed, after all Tax breaks help the economy & it's been three years since the first big one? Could it be that tax cuts are voodoo economics?
 
   The U. S. dollar is down against almost every other currency in the world. This, though bad for travelers, should be good for exporters and yet our trade deficit is the largest ever.
 
   While the average income in America has decreased or vanished, in the past three and a half years, prices especially health care & gasoline have increased dramatically, along with the cost of education.
 
   Let's do away with inheritance tax. Talk about a gift to the rich! lets face the fact that most working class Americans receive very little if anything from the death of a loved one, sometimes they even loose because of burial expenses. Your tax is based on the amount of your inheritance so the rich pay the most. Profits from taxes pay for the running of the country. We can't do away with the military, Police, Fire departments, schools, & other things we all need. If you give the rich tax breaks someone will have to pick up the tab for all of these things & that will be the middle class. It's nice to think that you will be leaving your wealth to your children, but lets face it to them it is a windfall, they never earned it. Lottery winners have to pay taxes on their winnings why shouldn't the rich who really only won the lottery of birth. Besides with the economy, as it is today, so stagnate how are you going to save enough to make your children worry about inheritance tax.
 
   8/12/04 CNN news  NEW YORK (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's tax cuts have transferred the federal tax burden from the richest Americans to middle-class families, with one-third of the cuts benefiting people with the top 1 percent of income, according to a government report cited in newspapers.
 
   Do you really want four more years of this?
 
   We have to lower the national debt. We have to stop giving tax incentives to companies for off shoring jobs. we have to increase the buying power of the middle class. We have to stop major corporations from price gauging, & we have to stop, (as citizens & patriots), buying products from corporations like Wal*Mart that underpay their employees threaten their suppliers in order to get lower prices & more importantly drive smaller stores out of business by selling at lower prices. We may gain by those lower prices but we also lose our neighborhood stores (jobs, local income taxes, & property taxes. Some of the buildings are abandoned & end up being not only eyesores but places where crime is prevalent.) & may also lose, as many cities are learning, in local expenditures, It seems that because of the poverty level wages they pay their employees, these employees have to depend on local agencies for health care that comes from the local taxpayers. A lot of these employees are on welfare. Wal*Mart  has just recently been investigated for hiring illegal immigrants. This practice not only costs American jobs and taxpayer money but could also give an income & base of operation to terrorists.  The extra money we spend at a reputable store well pay us back tenfold. Take pride in buying American. I'm not saying we should boycott all products not made in the U. S. Some products that are imported we can't get here. What I'm talking about is products that American companies do make & if you know that a corporation has outsourced jobs, boycott their products & buy from someone who hasn't. We have to do our part.
   9/21/04: I just read where Wal*Mart wants to hire soldiers coming back from Iraq. They are bragging about these jobs & what they are doing for our country by giving these jobs to veterans. Let's look at the facts. 1. The jobs they are offering start at $7.00 an hour & go to $20. Not the highest paying jobs. Plus they don't include health insurance. 2. They just recently lost a lot of employees because of the investigation on the hiring of illegal immigrants. 3. They not only get to replace the lost workers but make it into a publicity gimmick. Hey! America look at us. We're great for America.  Bull ****, give us the real facts.
 
   While we are talking about illegal immigrants, let's look at their economic impact. Let's face it, we need some of them to work our farms, the work is seasonal and farmers need lots of bodies to get the crops in, in a timely fashion. What we don't need is people coming in to work in illegal areas. i.e. prostitution (forced or otherwise) the drug trade, etc. We also don't want people coming in and working in areas like textiles & other factory work or fast food chains. I hear all the time that they mostly work on jobs that Americans won't take. Americans would take these jobs if the employers paid a decent wage & the only way to force them to do that is to limit the amount of people in the work force. We have to start enforcing our immigration laws.
 
   I've been hearing a lot, lately, about how John Kerry's plan to roll back the tax cut for the wealthy will hurt the economic growth by taxing small business owners. I've addressed this at the beginning of this page. Whether a small business is hiring more people or innovating & upgrading it's equipment. If they are making money they will do this anyway, so keeping the economy healthy & the national debt low will allow for easier access to low cost loans. Their businesses are more profitable & a prosperous business is more likely to create jobs then one that is only healthy because of tax breaks. Remember the lessons of Ronald Reagan's Voodoo Economics & Bill Clinton's prosperity. 
 
   I was just wondering. When you lose money to the government, weather it be by taxes or because of policy, isn't it the same? The Bush policies have cost many American jobs, increased Medicare cost, cut overtime pay, cost the people who receive minimum wage (The cost of living has gone up but the minimum wage hasn't been raised in seven years.) I feel that if I paid more taxes but had a good job & received more benefits from the government I'd be better off. How about you? Would you rather pay 10% of $30,000 or 13% of $40,000?
   Oh! by the way when we pay taxes we get some of it back in benefits, such as a stronger military, better health care, schools, retirement, front line defenders, etc. when we just outsource jobs we get nothing.
 
   Speaking of the National Debt. I've been thinking since the debt is what we owe to the future, have we thought about non monetary items like petroleum. Some of the things we are using now we'll never be able to pay back, some we will at greatly increased cost. The medical expenses your child may incur because of the air they're breathing or the fish they eat. The future increased price of petroleum products because of the decreased amount in the earth's oil reserves because of our present energy policies. (Dick Chaney "We should use more energy, it's good for the economy." ) Right now in Florida were seeing the future. As the Atlantic Ocean gets warmer (Global Warming) it creates more conducive conditions for the formation of more & more powerful hurricanes. The cost of rebuilding after major storms will be another drain on future economies. I could go on & on but you get the picture, we have to look at debt in a larger way. The men of a different era didn't think about the consequence of hunting the passenger pigeon to extinction. Yet we, with a knowledge of that past, are doing the same thing by poisoning our environment, or allowing our government to allow their industrial friends to do it for them.
 
   9/16/04 At least there are still a couple of Republicans who are for the people. Arlen Specter (Pa.) & Ben Nighthorse Campbell (Colorado) Voted with the Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee to block the federal overtime rules that critics say would prevent 6 million American workers from receiving overtime pay.
   The rules were blocked by a 16-13 vote, so if they had fallen in line with the party the rules would have passed 15-14 and George Bush would have given large companies another gift at the expense of the middle class.
 
   9/17/04 I just heard George Bush in a campaign speech say "We'll keep American jobs at home." Now he's either lying through his teeth or this is one of his largest Flip Flops since for his entire presidency to date he has not only advocated outsourcing but rewarded it through tax breaks. 
 
   10/7/04 NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Oil prices jumped to a new record at $53 a barrel before easing above $52 Thursday, on news of a strike in Nigeria and concerns over low winter heating fuel supplies.
   U.S. light crude for November delivery was up 43 cents to $52.45 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after briefly surging to an intraday record of $53. This marked a $20 a barrel, or 60 percent, rise in crude prices this year.
   Wasn't George Bush the Energy President? Didn't he say during the last campaign that he could keep energy prices down better then Al Gore could? Get out your Long Johns it's gonna be a cold winter.
 
   10/8/04: CNN/Money: NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - U.S. employers added 96,000 jobs in September while the unemployment rate stayed unchanged, according to a government report Friday that came in weaker than Wall Street expectations.
   Well his tax program seems to be working. People when are we go to open our eyes. Just yesterday AT&T Corp. announced it will cut another 7,400 jobs and reduce the value of its assets by $11.4 billion, spurred by its retreat from traditional consumer telephone services, the company said Thursday. That will bring the growth to under 88,000. Our economy is not healthy. How come Bill Clinton's policies could create so many jobs while reducing the national debt. While George Bush's create so few while also creating a massive National Debt. You can't tell me we are better off then we were 4 years ago.
 
   Something to think about. If Kerry does get to enact his Medical Insurance & Health Care proposals, including drug benefits, won't that give the middle class more money to spend. Now if people start to use that money to buy products that they haven't been buying now, won't that help the economy by causing manufactures to increase production to meet the demand. Increased production usually means hiring people. These people pay income taxes which lowers the deficit. So by passing health care & lowering medical expenses, you create wealth, you insure people access to better cheaper health care, you create jobs & you lower the national debt. Sounds like a good idea to me....
 
   There are a lot of unexpected situations when running a country. A good example would be the country being hit by four major Hurricanes. The cost to FEMA which is funded by tax dollars sky rocketed & now we have a shortage of the Flu Vaccine which is expected to be up to $20 Billion. Up 50% to employers and 33% to 50% to the economy. (see article) This added to the already stagnant economy will increase the National debt even more. Why is it we want every thing for nothing. I've never complained about taxes, I've always been willing to pay my fair share. George Bush says he is for responsible government yet if you look at his numbers 33% of his meager job growth in the last quarter were government jobs. Remember when the government receives tax revenue from government jobs they're only getting back a portion of what they paid out. Their only income comes from taxes on private sector jobs. 
 
   Lets look at a little History. Herbert Hoover came into office shortly before the Great Depression, promising "a chicken in every pot & two cars in every garage." He also gave tax breaks to the wealthy & increased the national debt. It took F. D. Roosevelt years to get the country back on it's feet. F. D. R. was a democrat. How the H**l did he ever lead us through the 2nd. World War? I thought democrats were weak on defense. I also thought that Social programs were bad for the economy. That's what George Bush has been telling us. It seems as if our best economic times have been under democratic presidents. 
   During the depression as people lost everything that they had saved all their lives for. In the crash of the stock market, suicide flourished. It's something I now worry about, with George Bush advocating privatization of Social Security. How many people lost their life savings when Enron declared bankruptcy? Do you really want to gamble your Social Security on a stock market that is already over inflated? 
 
   10/28/04 CNN: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits jumped 20,000 last week, the government said Thursday in a report that continues to be somewhat elevated by hurricane-related claims. First-time claims for state unemployment insurance aid rose to 350,000 in the week ended Oct. 23 from an upwardly revised 330,000 in the prior week, the Labor Department said.  I thought the economy was improving. 
   Nov. 3rd. CNN: SHANGHAI, China (Reuters) -- General Motors and Volkswagen said on Wednesday their vehicle sales in China fell between 6.5 and 28 percent last month, underscoring slowing demand in the world's fourth-largest vehicle market.  in another incident, a ministry official said on Wednesday that Maj. Hussein Shanoun was seized 10 days ago in Mosul in northern Iraq, and his decapitated body was found three days ago.
 
   8/25/04 I should have known, The Republican party is blaming the lower job growth rate on the hurricanes. First let me say that for an administration that is always telling us they are for smaller government, to have 30% of their new jobs be government jobs, is ludicrous. My second point is that wouldn't you think that after a hurricane the job rate would go up. I mean, how about all the construction jobs created for the rebuilding and all the support jobs. Wouldn't factories have to make some of the supplies, i.e. electrical, plumbing, etc. How about the people who have to replace mobile homes, won't that help the auto industry. Won't the lumber industry need to cut more trees & how about the truckers who have to deliver these supplies. How can the administration blame the hurricanes for the stagnate economy during their watch?
See what Lou Dobbs says about outsourcing
 
More to come.