Robert Reich Lies about GOP Economic lies!

Robert Reich Lies about GOP lies!

He claims the GOP lies to people about simple economics

Big Lie One: If you give tax cuts to the rich and to the corporations, everybody will benefit and it will all trickle down.

The argument is isolated to the Bush tax cuts which are but a mere fraction of what was going on in the larger economy. The economy was on the cusp of a recession of which the modest tax cuts had no impact (collapse of the Dot.com bubble). Further, the so called boom under Clinton was largely the result of an explosive tech boom that had nothing to do with tax rates.

Big Lie Two: If you shrink government, you create more jobs.

Now that government has lots of power, people look to it to create jobs. Communist countries had five-year plans. They didn't work. That's because jobs do not come from government getting out of the way and letting employers produce goods. 

 Big Lie Three: Taxes on the rich hurt the economy.

Liberals wants to increase the rate on capital gains and dividends to 28 percent, the idea being that it would only impact high earners. But that's not the case -- changes in tax policy affect economic behavior, something that "dynamic scoring" (as opposed to "static scoring") recognizes. Using dynamic analysis, Hodge and Schuyler assess the effect of a 28 percent capital gains tax rate. According to their model: All income groups, not just the wealthy, would see lower after-tax incomes. The amount of tax revenue the government would receive would fall. While static scoring estimates the tax would add $20 billion annually in new revenue, dynamic scoring concludes it would lose $12 billion in revenue.   The United States would have $142 billion less GDP each year. Wages would fall, resulting in $461 less annually for families earning between $50,000 and $75,000.

Big Lie Four: If you get jobs back the debt shrinks as a proportion of the national economy. It becomes more and more manageable.

By CBO’s estimate, the economy is now about 5 million jobs short of where it would be if the unemployment rate was down to its sustainable level and participation in the labor force was back up to its trend. The shortage of jobs has occurred mostly because demand for goods and services has been weak relative to the productive capacity of the economy. Federal debt has slowed economic growth during the past few years.

Big Lie Five: Social security is a ponzi scheme.

Social Security, like the federal government as a whole (which is 57 percent underfunded), has been run on a take-as-you-go basis. Each generation of retirees (rich, middle class and poor) takes from the contemporaneous young, promising the young that their turn will come when they’re old, at generational expropriation. This Ponzi scheme is an ongoing moral outrage. Current and near-term retirees (rich, middle class, and poor) are being asked to pay not a penny of the system’s $23 trillion unfunded liability. This bill will, apparently, be dumped entirely in our children’s laps requiring of them, not 37 percent, but 50 percent or higher lifetime FICA tax payments in exchange for no extra benefits.

Big Lie Six: We need to tax the poor. 

Under the current tax code, many poor pay no income tax. That disenfranchises them from and insolates them from the economics of a healthy nation. Paying at least some taxes give then “skin” in the game of economic prosperity of the nation; of which they benefit greatly. The poorest would pay the same as the next level above. However, they will benefit disproportionately from the “earned income tax credit”.  We need and will benefit from the involvement of all peoples. 10% of $16,000 (poverty level) is $1,600 while 10% of $70,000 is $7,000. Is that not progressive enough?