Why Republicanism Doesn’t Work
Every election I inevitably hear Americans going on and on about how all Democrats do is raise taxes. The Republicans for their part go on and on about how they will lower taxes. Here’s what the problem is. Americans are incredibly stupid people.
This is intended for them: You see, the value of money depreciates over time. So does spending and earning power. An example of this would be the salary of someone working thirty or forty or fifty years ago. $5 forty years ago could buy you, well…
A movie with popcorn was 50 cents. But lets say it was actually a dollar. An hour’s work earned you 8 movies. Or coke. Coke was 5-10 cents. Let’s say 10. An hour’s work was 50 cokes. It got you one to two full tanks of gas. And these are the big car days — 60L, 15GAL tanks. These two examples should suffice. Now move forward to today. The minimum wage is eight dollars. “Three dollars more an hour!” scream the rednecks. Right, but what does that get you? Well, a movie at the local theatre is $11. You’ve earned less than a movie an hour. Coke? Well, $8 could get you 24 cokes on sale, but let’s be generous and say you got a 3-case deal, 36 cans. Gas? Well, a 60L tank at $1.45 a liter is…$87. A tenth of a tank of gas.
Now even an idiot should be able to see that this means your hour’s work — your dollar’s earning power — has dropped by anywhere from 20-90%. Right, so drop taxes. Brilliant. Make people poorer. Can’t give them cheap medicine (that’s Communism!). Can’t give them welfare. Can’t make schools better – that would all require tax increases. So what do they do? They commit crimes.
And what do Americans do with criminals? Try to reform them? No. Put them to useful, productive work for the state? Not really. Mississippi uses chain-gangs and some prisons have farms, but those hardly help the poor, decent, hard-working American families one paycheque away from being on the street. They do help the bottom line of the companies that partially own the prisons though. In some states a federal prison inmate can do slave labour (assembly line stuff) for seven cents an hour too, again for corporate benefits. But what do you do with criminals? You punish them. A very nice 17th century puritan worldview. As God does in hell so it is given to the Americans to do on earth. So you take the poor SOB who…turned to drugs…knocked someone up…stole something…in prison for a few years. That will teach him. But while he’s in prison, he will need to be fed and clothed and given medical care. To the tune of some hundred thousand dollars per year.
The US has the biggest prison population on earth, and it has been growing exponentially for over 30 years (the War on Drugs started the economic chain reaction that caused this, along with hyperinflation), and those prisoners each require tax dollars. Then the poor son of a bitch gets let out; he needs to be monitored — by officers paid out of tax dollars — and when he does something wrong because his record wont let him get a decent job or an education (a drug charge in the US is sufficient to permanently stop you from being elligible for government student loans, so no college for even simple marijuana possession) you’ll need police officers to catch him.
So what does the government do? Well it privatizes, and talks about crime going up. (And of course the poor vote republican because the crime affects them more than the rich because theyre among it. So the Republicans have created a self-perpetuating supply of votes from the very idiots they’re exploiting and incarcerating.) And they move taxes from schooling. Those companies they give things to when they privatize? They get tax breaks. And people make up for corporate tax breaks. Since they can’t raise taxes, they take from social programs…
War is also important to the Americans. And every part of war needs taxes. Weapons development? Taxes. Deployment? Taxes. They also need soldiers, but that’s the only choice alot of poor people have (and how did they get to that low point? Hmm..) so they’re not a problem, until they’re injured. Now the US government treats its veterans like utter crap (especially when they didnt fight in a popular war), but they still get medicaid and a salary, which again is from funds collected in part by the levying of taxes.
So what do the Americans need to realize? YOU NEED TAXES FOR SERVICES. And since money’s value goes down, the amount of money required for things to stay the same must be INCREASED.
