Ted Rall for November 03, 2008
Transcript:
How trickledown economics work. Take a worker who earns $10 an hour. Cut her pay in half. Now she earns $5 an hour. (Woman: Hey!) (Man: I'm doing this for you!) The worker's boss invests the $5 he saved. The economy grows. Soon he's doing so well that he can pay his worker $12 an hour. Now the worker earns $12 an hour. Cut her pay in half. Now she earns $6 an hour. (Woman: But-) Again, the boss invests the other $6. The economy grows even faster; the worker earns even more. Now the worker earns $14 an hour- more than she did before.
Everyone tries to argue that WWII “pulled America out of the depression.” Does that make the slightest bit of sense? With two wars, then, our economy should be going gangbusters. It’s investment, though, not spending which causes the economy to grow and overall wealth to increase sustainably. Granted, this also increases inequality, but for most purposes I don’t mind if my neighibor gets an extra 10,000 in real wages if I have an extra 1,000.
Of course, the whole cartoon is based on a lie. The upper 50% pay something like 90% of all taxes. And these bailout packages (in addition to the CRA which helped this whole mess get as bad as it did) have been supported disproportionately by Democrats rather than Republicans. Noone is ‘taking money from workers.’ Quite the opposite.
Half of government is just selling people’s money to special interests. High taxes hurt the honest disproportionately. The liars and cheats can just find tax dodges.