Let's start with what we do know, because it's already happened.
We know cutting taxes on the wealthiest Americans and companies doesn't work, because it didn't work. None of the nearly $2 trillion of those tax cuts ever trickled down to the rest of us. And we know it didn't create millions of jobs – at least not here in America.
We also know that slashing regulations and regulatory oversight of the US financial services companies doesn't work, because that didn't work either. Rather than using all that extra cash and regulatory freedom to do the kind of things that create long term growth, they “leveraged it” to create a kind of imaginary parallel universe, populated by imaginary (unregulated) investment instruments, which they flipped between themselves creating imaginary assets, imaginary profits, but strangely no imaginary loses.
(Sidebar link: Here are a few of my favorite -- “derivative investments.”)
So, that's what we know. And we know it because we're living the consequences right now.
That leaves us the Obama way.
I can't speak for conservatives, but when they charge that Obama's policies will "ruin the economy and the nation," I have to assume they mean Obama will ruin them in different ways than their policies have already ruined it.
Well, I don't know about you but, after what we've been through, I'm ready for different.
So, while the dethroned right wails in the desert about how Obama is about to turn America towards European socialism, I say, fine. At least while we dig ourselves out of the tar pit of phony capitalism the right gave us, we'll be able to go to a doctor when sick and, while we might never be able to retire, we'll at least have Medicare and Social Security (which, please recall, the right wanted to offer as a sacrifice to the Wall Street volcano gods back in 2001.)
Oh, and please note those numbers above. Send them along to your favorite Rush/O'Reilly fans – $4 trillion vs. $1.14 quadrillion.
Of course they won't get it. If they could get it, they would have switched off those right wing propagandists years ago. And you can bet your bottom dollar -- if you still have one -- that when their own house goes into foreclosure or they lose their job, they'll blame who? Obama and the Democrats, of course.
Because stupid isn't skin deep. Stupid goes right to bone.
Republicans are counting on it.
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