Republicans Kind of Suck...

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Well, I did imply it... as the only way to convince Joe Six Pack that lower income taxes are good for him. However, if companies must use toll roads and pay fees for every little things in the new tollbooth economy and infrastructure is collapsing because of "starve the beast" and medical insurance costs are through the roof thanks to the gouging going on, that's not good either for hiring Americans. So these income taxes help create more favourable business conditions by strengthening infrastructure and a strong state.

Government jobs do enhance GDP. They do services that improve quality of life and improve the conditions for doing business. Even if there were government workers doing nothing this means customers for private business that wouldn't exist otherwise - but as there are many things to do to improve life then why not have this happen through the state?

$100 billion or so for construction projects doesn't amount to very much in a country as vast as the United States. The stimulus was far too small. Now the ideological arguments on the Right against stimulus claim that there is a finite amount of money held by Rich people mainly and that when government decides to spend lots of money that increases the competition for that money and drives up the interest rates. This is called Crowding Out. This theory however is propaganda. When money is spent by government there's more money in the economy. If Crowding Out were true, then you'd see interest rates rising and they're not! They're still near zero.

Right now there's debt deflation going on. The only way to prevent much of the economy from collapsing under that debt deflation is government spending. There is no other way, there is no alternative. Actually, there is another possible solution, and that's to write down the debts that are causing this. Either one are politically difficult because the Right sees such things as helping the "undeserving", namely people who are not rolling in money.

The private sector is not demanding large numbers of new workers now - in fact, they're doing the opposite. So if the private sector can't absorb existing unemployed, what makes anyone think that they're in a position to absorb government workers?

What if in the future, automation is such that ten times what we need is being produced yet only half of the existing workforce is required. Surely you don't think that the company owners should reap all the bounty and those idle people live in garbage dumps. For one thing, these rich owners can only consume so much - so if there isn't demand from the dump dwellers then the production will be revised downward. That's what happens when demand is reduced through pauperisation in the name of "self-sufficiency" and the "work ethic" - private business will be forced to adjust production downward, the nation will produce less.

Of course even sales taxes figure into the cost of living, so large hikes in that cause wage adjustments upwards. The real danger to workers is not taxes, it's unemployment. A large Reserve Army of Labour will cause permanent adjustments downwards, particularly in cases of stingy or non-existent safety nets. Tax cuts shred the safety net and make it more difficult for governments to deal with unemployment so this leads in due course to the permanent lowering of the standard of living.

This is why there's a policy for a Reserve Army of Labour, and also with automation, the policy has been that all the benefits go to Capital, to the owners, and none to the workers. This makes the owners more powerful still, the workers weaker, and permits the downward pressure on the standard of living.

If income taxes were raised substantially, if all taxes were raised, and that money went into paying the unemployed more, into creating more jobs, in a big welfare state, in free health care and the rest of it, it would reduce these pressures on the standard of living. Higher taxes are in fact best for most people.

As for the mention of Communism, Marx himself understood with the growing efficiencies and the fact that Capital would take it all, this would lead in due course to a form of communism, and it may happen because it's just not sustainable to have all the benefits from technology accrue to a small group of owners who end up dominating society totally and taking everything... it's a completely unbalanced society. It's silly also to speak of people having to starve for not contributing when most of the work is done by machines! It's not like starving the person will do any good, that this will cut into society's surplus in a way that will threaten the whole! The Right has these strange ideas like we're in the Middle Ages and the surplus of society is almost nothing and that mass starvation is around the corner if the "non self-sufficient" are allowed to eat. Thing is, even then such people were allowed to eat.

my very best friend online who i've known for years thats lives in maryland is a republican and i respect, and look up to most of his viewpoints