Conservatives, Taxes and Debt: Shifting Public Wealth to the Private Sector?

I'll add in the monies flowing for products purchased by government - frequently at ridiculous prices, and including 'cost overruns' that all too often tack on to a contract.

Further, privatising prisons provides industry with what amounts to slave labour, selling products competing with companies with non-prison labour. You can bet most of the difference goes not to savings but to the business owners/investors.

The economic crisis of 2008 shifted a lot of income away from those of lesser means, in a way akin to a big earthquake jolting land forward. Now the crisis is used to attack Social Security, Medicaid, and a host of other social services.

The GOP cared not a bit about deficits until 20 January 2009 - after it stuck us with war costs, lowered taxes compounding the problem, with most of the lost revenue accruing to... you know.

Nordette - gmta - I actually had the EXACT same thought re: connecting what the GOP candidates say to having little knowledge about debt and deficits, or public budgeting for that matter. And I say this as an elected in a small city where the numbers are small enough that you can see pretty much everything.

Also, you may laugh but I actually woke up this morning thinking something similar to your point about it's really a shift in wealth that's desired - not the anti-tax thing so much - but under the Reagan trickle down guise that those with money will spend it - has anyone noticed? THEY AREN'T SPENDING. So demand remains too low to power the kind of in achievable yet still constantly moved goalposts set by the GOP candidates when it comes to judging Obama and the economy.

Eh - I could go on and on but I'll stop there for now.

Great post - more politics from Nordette!!

The whole deficit thing tends to ignore key elements, from the fact almost 1/3 of the debt is money the government owes itself to the fact corporations also send debt forward via bonds. In fact, companies have somewhere between 3 and 4 trillion in bond debt out there, and each company can roll over a bond into a new one, it need not be paid back, so long as they continue paying bondholders according to the bond terms. Ten years ago, if someone mentioned a plan to destroy social services, I'd have thought them overtorqued. Today... debt makes a great rally cry for cuts, when reasonable people know there has to be revenue increases through higher tax rates. The whole wish for private encroachment into government services bothers me a great deal. There are things we can do without need for a profit motive. I fear for instance private doings in our prisons, and as someone who spent 21 months in a fed prison camp, I've got lots to say on the subject, but I will spare everyone such a rant. The great danger is industrialisation of our prisons, a machine sucking people in and sucking profit out of a controlled workforce. It is counter to the interests of society, but prisons are a dirty business, and how many people want to do anything but say 'they deserve it'?

Yes, we need fiscal sanity, but that does not mean digging in heels, nor does it mean more tax cuts from those who have most prospered - at the expense btw of the rest of us. I'll stop here, my eyes are foggy, and I need sleep. :-)