It's stunning how many mid to lower income folks still believe...

That if we just lower the marginal tax rate even further and thus give million/billionaires even more of a break, our economy will turn around?

Worship of the wealthy seems to still be a prevalent psychological malady in the USA.
In fact, many listen to multi-millionaire "pundits" on radio and TV telling them they don't need access to affordable healthcare and that "class warfare" is a myth.


:banghead:
---

What I have understood is that the very rich tend to keep money they get to themselves rather than spending it. And spending a tax break or whatever is the best way to get the economy rolling again. When we get together with friends, my husband always brings up the Wall Street bailout, and how it isn't freeing up mortgage money or doing much of anything--then he asks, "What do you think would have happened if they had divvied up the money amongst all the citizens?" The response is always the same--we'd be in a lot better position financially. One low income person at a time.....

Forced teaching to pass standardized tests = Mission Accomplished. Freedumb.

Money needs to be spent. That is the purpose of it.

bothered to look further. All ethereal.

I would have had to switch parties right around the convention if it was greenlit, lol.

about the bailout. It was about tax dividends or something, but I couldn't believe it! He's a very smart guy too, he might've even been valedictorian of his class in HS. I can't recall exactly what it was but I literally just read Paul Krugman's blog a few minutes before I got the email and he obliterated what my friend had been talking about so I had that info fresh in my mind.

I think overall I can't believe the inanity of the economic policy discussion in this country. It's so reckless and stupid it blows my mind. And the people hurt by it the most buy into it in alarming numbers.

I'm talking about my kids, grandkids nieces and nephews who are still working and in many cases struggling to get by. They're better educated than I am but they're too stupid to realize they're being scammed. After the events of the past eight years you wouldn't think anybody would need convincing it was all bullshit. Yet everyone of these people is worse off financially than they were in 2000 and with one exception still think they are part of the "haves" instead of the rest of us.

"Re-building the Republican Party" was the topic. It's amazing.. people still give Bush a Total Free Pass on the War and the Economy. Still guzzling the Kool Aide.

wonder if we can turn this country around..

:banghead: Hope and Change can not fix stupid or greedy. A working class that continue to vote against it's own financial interest, refusing too see the forest for the trees isn't advocating for change and the mega greedy do not want things to change, financially.

this economy is going to take a total rebuild to make it work again. Fixing the tax structure is just one part.

The religious right is so closely tied to big money - that is where the pro-wealthy BS comes from...

As Paul Krugman said ---

“The fundamental fact of American politics - and I've sharpened my view on this since last year and the hardcover edition of the book - is that we've got an alliance between the religious right and the accumulators of great wealth. Those are the people who are running things.”

best forum I have seen. We have been taught to reward and admire the lucky and despise and ridicule the unlucky. This country as well as every country needs to provide jobs, food, shelter, clothing, helath care, and childcare. They have taught us to hate ourselves for even thinking we deserve anything and yet Peter Kraus gets $50,000,000 for two weeks work.

distinguish between appearance and substance. Cheap clothes with fancy labels, cheap cars that look like luxury cars, cheap houses that got used as ATM's to buy more cheap landfill fodder all indicate a basic unawareness of what it takes to actually accomplish something. They wind up letting others make their culture for them and sacrifice their identity in the process. Consumers are no longer the objective of the manufacturing process, they are part of the process itself.

People can't see beyond the culture they have contracted to have made for them.

Well said.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvwK-3cQ6gE

Show us Your Habits, Your Facts, Your Fears
Give us your address, your shoe size, your years
your digits, your plans, your number, your eyes
your skedule, your desktop, your details, your life.
Show us your children, your photos, your home.
Here, take credit, take insurance, take a loan.
Get a job, get a pension, get a haircut, get a suit.
Play the lottery, play football, play the field, sports to boot

We want your Soul (x5)

Here's programmes, here's matters, here's Britney, here's Cola
Here's pizza, here's TV, here's some rock and some rolla
Watch commercials, more commercials, watch Jerry, not Oprah
Buy a better life from the comfort of your sofa
Here's popcorn, here's magazines, here's milkshake, here's blue jeans
here's padded bras, here's long cars, here's football shirts, here's baseball caps
here's live talk shows, here's video games, here's cola lite, here's Timberlake
here's fingertips, here's colegen, here's all night bars, here's plastic

We want your soul (x5)

Your cellphone, your wallet, your time, your ideas
No barcode, no party, no iodine, no beers
your bankcard, your license, your thoughts, your fears
no simcard, no disco, no photo, not here
your blood, your sweat, your passions, your regrets
your office, your timeoff, your fashions, your sex
your tits, your pass, your face, your ass.

to take a sur tax on assets and a huge revision of the tax code to upward progressive taxation to get back all the money that was appropriated.

Huge spending and huge tax increases are the only way to save the middle and low class. But if you ain't the middle and low class .............

Bog Media and Hate Radio need to be destroyed if democracy is going to be restored here.

If you're one of the oligarchs.

They control the idiot boxes so they control what people think.

But they are willing to spend 100 bucks to watch Eli Manning throw a football.