TANSTAAFL - There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, popularized by the great sci-fi author Robert Heinlein.
There are things we all want and need, and there are costs that have to be paid.
Labels and stereotypes also always have exceptions, and are often unfair and inaccurate, but it is possible to find groups of people with common attributes for purposes of explanation and discussion.
Consider two groups of people.
Group A includes the Koch brothers, the Waltons, the DeVoses, Richard Mellon Scaife, Franklin Graham, Art Pope, the Bushes, and Trump.
Group B includes Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, the Clintons, Barack and Michelle Obama, and George Soros.
Group A inherited their wealth. Group B made their successes from relatively more humble beginnings, in several cases, much more humble. All of that wealth was made possible by the society in which we live.
Group A is very protective of their wealth and power. Group B is giving back to the society that made their success possible.
Back to TANSTAAFL - Group A, protecting their wealth, has found a way to make other people pay for them to do so. A $billion or two a year in buying politicians and funding a massive and effective propaganda machine is far less than the cost of losing wealth, notably due to the certain loss of fossil fuel profits and wealth. Tobacco wealth and income was another example. That propaganda machine and ignorance has caused people to vote against their own interests.
Our society has costs. Education, healthcare, decent homes, our children’s safety, good streets, clean water, food supplies, police and fire protection, the MIC (which Eisenhower warned against)... are expensive.
No one wants to pay high taxes. Any politician in this country who campaigned for tax increases would fail to be elected.
Group A has succeeded in shifting taxes down to lower and middle classes. Federal tax and spending cuts force expenses down to the states. State tax and spending cuts force taxes down to local authorities, and increased bond issues. Most people don’t make the connection between tax cuts for the very wealthy, and their own higher property and sales taxes, rent, and business prices, as well as higher medical costs and insurance premiums.
Those bonds are another win for the well-to-do. The high interest paid by all of us is tax exempt income to them. I’ll bet that very few people know that Texas has the second highest per capita bond debt in the country, perhaps highest as a percentage of state GDP. Houston and Dallas are close to bankruptcy. The state legislature has literally stolen federal funds meant for education, and lost $millions in federal funding.
Another example, our per capita medical costs are generally more than twice that of all other developed countries in the entire world, yet all of them have some form of universal healthcare.
People without insurance go to emergency rooms. Medical bankruptcies were 64% of all bankruptcies before the ACA, which reduced them. We pay for those too, indirectly. Reagan and his congress privatized ER care, allowing/forcing the closure of public financed hospitals and clinics, allowing tax cuts again.
Many people depend upon social security benefits. Paul Ryan ate and went to college thanks to his father’s. Reagan’s tax cuts for the wealthy were disastrous to the national budget and national debt, so they increased taxes on the rest of us, including taxing social security benefits. Reagan and his congress knew they couldn’t cut social security benefits so they back doored it. That was worse, because it depleted social security fund balances with the money going into general funds.
We have the greatest wealth and earnings inequity in our nation’s history.
Economic collapses and recessions in 1929, 1987, 2000, 2007, ? All from the same causes.
The above was written as a Facebook post in 2018.
Paul Ryan and others pushed through more tax cuts for the wealthy, signed by Trump. Charles Koch threatened to withhold $700 million in campaign contributions if the legislation didn’t get passed. A few days after it did, Ryan got $500,000. He retired, but the money helped make him more influential in getting more people like him elected.
The COVID 19 pandemic was made much worse by wealth and income inequality and our lack of a public healthcare system. Most deaths could have been prevented. Trump’s and Republican governors’ denial and incompetence made it worse. Deaths in minorities were and still are worse than white Americans.
Twelve people have been identified as the leading spreaders of disinformation. Trump followers and other “conservatives” are far more likely to refuse vaccinations. They’re the people filling our hospitals and overwhelming healthcare workers.
Germany has one quarter the population of the U.S., but far fewer deaths per capita. They credit their healthcare system for part of that.
Update 06/16/2023
Due in part to uncertainty in stock and bond markets, and money from tax cuts, corporations and equity investment entities have put $billions into real estate, a lot of it buying single family homes to rent. That has raised home prices, as well as has COVID related relocation, making home buying unaffordable for many families. That means more renters, and higher rents.
Several founders of equity investment entities are major Republican donors. They don't want to
Although most of that investment has been from U.S. buyers, some has been foreign, the largest from China.
Buying homes is a key to growing personal wealth. The inability to do so locks a huge number of people out of being able to participate.
As this article explains, poverty in the U.S. is deliberate to an extent. People who struggle to eat and pay bills never rise to the level of self-fulfillment, protest, and involvement.
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