Obama's Tax Address-- What's Consumption?

The disgusting display of conspicuous consumption and sociopathic entitlement from some of society's most repulsive and dangerous parasites on Sunday at the mansions of Romney supporters toilet paper manufacturer and oil baron David Koch and Ron Perelman, the Revlon guy, was a perfect backdrop for President Obama's tax speech the next day. Short version: Obama wants to extend tax cuts for everyone making up to $250,000. The Republicans, of course, don't give a damn about anyone earning less than a million dollars and they insist on extending tax cuts to the very wealthy. The president's tax policy speech is in the video above. But I want to highlight a couple of things he said.

Many members of the other party believe that prosperity comes from the top down, so that if we spend trillions more on tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, that that will somehow unleash jobs and economic growth.
 
I disagree. I think they’re wrong. I believe our prosperity has always come from an economy that’s built on a strong and growing middle class-- one that can afford to buy the products that our businesses sell; a middle class that can own homes, and send their kids to college, and save enough to retire on. That’s why I’ve cut middle-class taxes every year that I’ve been President-- by $3,600 for the typical middle-class family. Let me repeat: Since I’ve been in office, we’ve cut taxes for the typical middle-class family by $3,600.

...Moreover, we’ve tried it their way. It didn’t work. At the beginning of the last decade, Congress passed trillions of dollars in tax cuts that benefited the wealthiest Americans more than anybody else. And we were told that it would lead to more jobs and higher incomes for everybody, and that prosperity would start at the top but then trickle down. 
 
And what happened? The wealthy got wealthier, but most Americans struggled. Instead of creating more jobs, we had the slowest job growth in half a century. Instead of widespread prosperity, the typical family saw its income fall. And in just a few years, we went from record surpluses under Bill Clinton to record deficits that we are now still struggling to pay off today.
 
So we don’t need more top-down economics. We’ve tried that theory. We’ve seen what happens.  We can’t afford to go back to it. We need policies that grow and strengthen the middle class-- policies that help create jobs, that make education and training more affordable, that encourage businesses to start up and create jobs right here in the United States.

Everyone is aware by now that the Koch brothers hosted one of the Romney parties in East Hampton Sunday and that another one was at Ron Perelman's 40-room castle on an estate called The Creeks and that they raised over $3 million... and a lot of ugly press for everyone involved. Less well know is that Perelman's principal co-host for the bash at The Creeks is a particularly pernicious commodities trader, deranged right-wing gold bug and psychopath Andrew Sabin (who's shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions for some of the craziest of the crazy Republicans, the likes of Georgia John Bircher Paul Broun, racist garbage George Allen (VA), hated North Dakota landlord Rick Berg, and repeated immense sums to Wall Street whore Eric Cantor. In an interview Sabin defines the tax situation much the way millionaires and billionaires see it-- the only consumption that counts is consumption by the rich. To them, as we saw Sunday, the "little people" and "nail girls" are barely human and shouldn't even be allowed to vote. Sabin says Romney isn't his favorite and he's adamant that a regressive flat tax is just what's needed.

Sabin is very adamant that gold is a currency, and he has a very low opinion of President Obama. “I wouldn't be surprised if some of these central banks that are in trouble, like Greece, Ireland and Portugal, have sold off a little bit of gold to liquidity. But I don't know that,” Sabin said. “As long as these countries are printing money, the long term outlook for gold is very positive. We have a real problem with this economy. We have by far the worst President in the history of this country. There's nothing close. Until you have confidence in the government, until you know what you'll be paying in tax and what the regulations are going to be, nobody is going to do anything. There is so much money in this country, but nobody is going to invest until they know what the rules will be five years from now. There can't be demand from consumers because they're afraid to invest when they don't know what the future holds. That's Obama's problem. He doesn't understand you can't create jobs until you create consumption.”

And yet creating consumption-- putting money in the hands of working families that will spend it-- is exactly what President Obama has been trying to do-- and what the GOP has been working hard to prevent. Sabin sounds like a moron-- but rich morons have a lot of sway. He and his kind go nuts when they hear Obama saying things like "that’s why I believe it’s time to let the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans-- folks like myself-- to expire... [T]he money we’re spending on these tax cuts for the wealthy is a major driver of our deficit, a major contributor to our deficit, costing us a trillion dollars over the next decade." And that exactly what he did say in his speech yesterday.

By the way, these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans are also the tax cuts that are least likely to promote growth. So we can’t afford to keep that up, not right now. So I’m not proposing anything radical here. I just believe that anybody making over $250,000 a year should go back to the income tax rates we were paying under Bill Clinton-- back when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest budget surplus in history, and plenty of millionaires to boot. 
 
And this is not just my opinion. The American people are with me on this. Poll after poll shows that’s the case. And there are plenty of patriotic and very successful, very wealthy Americans who also agree, because they know that by making that kind of contribution, they’re making the country as a whole stronger.
 
...[O]ur top priority has to be giving middle-class families and small businesses the security they deserve. You’re the ones who are driving this recovery forward. You’re the ones who are driving this recovery forward, and I think it’s time to widen the circle of opportunity and help more Americans who work hard to get ahead. It’s time that we learned the lessons of our past and lay the foundation for a better future. That’s what I’m focused on every day, and I hope Congress will join me in doing the right thing.

As he know, Congress won't-- at least not this right-wing Congress dedicated to a strategy of wrecking the economy to win elections in November. Defeating every single Republican-- and every single one of their Blue Dog and New Dem allies-- would be the solution to economic stagnation-- and the immediate solution. Please help Blue America do just that. And, remember... the billionaires want something in return for all of this fundraising...