Lights are Going Off All Over as "America Goes Dark" (NAFTA, unemployment)

[UpNort]

He forgot the pozzi scheme the unions worked out to drain every town and city dry. Then the liberals who are running some of those areas are cutting important things for the rest of their residents. Trying to squeeze more out to bankrupt it.

[marcopolo]

Interesting that Paul Krugman and Ayn Rand in "Atlas Shrugged" both used the metaphor of the lights going out. John Galt's ultimate sign of the demise of the looters and levelers and moochers would be the lights going out in New York City.

With the President, the Majority Leader, and the Speaker of the House now pronouncing dialogue taken from the pages of Rand's novel, and the insanity of the bureacracy reaching Randian levels, and capital very clearly on strike (piling up, idled by uncertainty), it is startling that Krugman would use lights going out as a sign that the moochers have not been taking enough from the producers.

Before you reply by attacking multimillionaire CEO's, consider that I am speaking of the 99.999% of producers that are not among the few dozen caricatures of wealth currrently being used to tax and over-regulate the hardest-working, most successful people in your community.

[InformedConsent]

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

But the main point is that these hard working people are cutting their own throats by cutting government, who is really the only benefactor they have; the rich would let them starve, or bleed to death on the side of the road.

That's absurd. The rich didn't get that way by being stupid. They know darn well their own continued success depends on people being able to buy their goods and services. They ALSO know that for every $1 taxed out of the economy and spent by the government, $1.10 of economic growth is destroyed.
http://mercatus.org/sites/default/fi...nd%20taxes.pdf

Guess what that means? A smaller government that taxes and spends LESS yields a healthier economy. Krugman's an ivory tower IDIOT!

[cruxan]

sounds like the road to the banana repuplic..

[Roadking2003]

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

The sad part is that millions of poor white Americans work in concert with the ruling oligarchs to depress wages and largely have bought into the bogus beliefs that all taxes are wasted. We've discussed in this forum before how white rural and southern types have bought into these bogus beliefs even though it works totally against their own best interests. We need to get a grip on things or we're goners.

... the wealthy, who simply refused to pay a cent on behalf of the people who worked for them and made them rich.

Krugman just likes a big powerful government that takes our money and tells us how to live our lives.

And when did the people who work for the rich "make them rich"? That is really funny.

And only white Americans and "southern types" are working against their own best interests ???? How racist.

So what are "southern types"? Are they crooks? taxpayers? College educated? poor people? Who is Krugman trying to insult?

[odanny]

Originally Posted by reid_g

This class envy tirade would make Marx blush.

And it was Lenin, I believe, who coined the phrase "useful idiots".

The richest 2 percent of Americans know all about useful idiots, and how to keep their subsidies, their tax breaks, and their wealth by using the power of 'useful idiots' to their advantage.

[Roadking2003]

Originally Posted by marcopolo

Interesting that Paul Krugman and Ayn Rand in "Atlas Shrugged" both used the metaphor of the lights going out. John Galt's ultimate sign of the demise of the looters and levelers and moochers would be the lights going out in New York City.

With the President, the Majority Leader, and the Speaker of the House now pronouncing dialogue taken from the pages of Rand's novel, and the insanity of the bureacracy reaching Randian levels, and capital very clearly on strike (piling up, idled by uncertainty), it is startling that Krugman would use lights going out as a sign that the moochers have not been taking enough from the producers.

Before you reply by attacking multimillionaire CEO's, consider that I am speaking of the 99.999% of producers that are not among the few dozen caricatures of wealth currrently being used to tax and over-regulate the hardest-working, most successful people in your community.

Ayn Rand and Barak Obama are polar opposites.

[odanny]

Originally Posted by NSHL10

How did we get there? It wasn't the anti govt rhetoric as Krugman claimed; it WAS the govt. Here are some of the examples:.

Krugman nailed it indeed.

Originally Posted by NSHL10

Stop elevating stupidity into victimhood.

The real victims are too stupid to know their victims. That's why the Dumbing Down of America has proven so disastrous for this country, and I will give credit where credit is due: The Republican Party, acting as money changers for the nations wealthiest citizens, has expertly manufactured emotional diatribes and distractions to the issues facing us to calculating perfection.

[texdav]

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

Paul Krugman nailed it today with his column called "America Goes Dark" and I agree with him fully.

Excerpts:

- lights are going out all over America — literally. ... a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, is now in the process of unpaving itself ... a nation that once prized education — that was among the first to provide basic schooling to all its children — is now cutting back.

- a large part of our political class is showing its priorities: given the choice between asking the richest 2 percent or so of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during the Clinton-era boom, or allowing the nation’s foundations to crumble — literally in the case of roads, figuratively in the case of education — they’re choosing the latter. It’s a disastrous choice in both the short run and the long run.

- How did we get to this point? It’s the logical consequence of three decades of antigovernment rhetoric ... the end result of the long campaign against government is that we’ve taken a disastrously wrong turn. America is now on the unlit, unpaved road to nowhere.


The message from the very wealthy, Wall Street, the investment bankers and all their running dogs in Congress is that WE do not matter. The alternative is to make sure all the Bush tax cuts expire and we return to the tax rates in effect when we had a balanced budget in 2001 when Clinton left office. The balanced budget we had in 2001 was the result of bi-partisan efforts of Newt Gingrich and the Contract With America and Bill Clinton's administration.

The sad part is that millions of poor white Americans work in concert with the ruling oligarchs to depress wages and largely have bought into the bogus beliefs that all taxes are wasted. We've discussed in this forum before how white rural and southern types have bought into these bogus beliefs even though it works totally against their own best interests. We need to get a grip on things or we're goners.

The unending delay in getting health care, a debate we've had in this nation for decades, was part and parcel of the intentional gridlock in DC that played into the hands of the wealthy, who simply refused to pay a cent on behalf of the people who worked for them and made them rich. Same for efforts to bring safe food to our tables, clean air into our lungs, etc. The rich prefer that we'd all die and never collect Social Security or a pension, they want all that money for themselves.

I thnik its more like the 50% of america wanting things without working for them. They want to devide the wealth of the country by political means which will in the end just mean less wealth. We already have the second highest corporate tax rates in the wolrd. The american workers wants entitlements not what his fathers before him worked for. Its the give me something free ethic; not the work ethic these days.We now have close to 50% paying no income taxes and 69% gettting more government services than they pay for in taxes. That mean that they have no skin in the game and the deficit spending the last 11/2 shows it. They expect investors to invest when the risk from looking at the holdings of money even to the lower class savings is clearly not worth the risk involved.No body wants to pay but they want to decide on government paying more of their existence. Government really produces no wealth itself.Even the bush tax cuts o the wealthy being dropped will not make a dent i what this country now owes on the chinese credit card.Thre is a reaso for the deficit and expect lower growth rates and that is the countyry is headed to where greece is in debt quickly.Any liberal that didn;'t get a cut in that 11/2 trillion dollars of spending is in the elite specail interest that consumed it;poor fools.

[Mike from back east]

Originally Posted by odanny

And it was Lenin, I believe, who coined the phrase "useful idiots".

The richest 2 percent of Americans know all about useful idiots, and how to keep their subsidies, their tax breaks, and their wealth by using the power of 'useful idiots' to their advantage.

Exactly what Krugman's article was about, how millions are hoodwinked and brainwashed to the point of working AGAINST their own interests, as seen by many of the inane posts in this thread. Useful idiots, doing the bidding of the wealthy who are laughing all the way to the offshore bank.

KKKarl Rove referred to the evangelicals as "useful idiots" after being visited by emissaries from the religious right, i.e., the GOP used these gullible rubes for votes while they looted the Treasury on behalf of the very wealthy, big investment banks, big oil, etc.