Deficits and Deceit

Just as it was once said that all roads lead to Rome, it is now the conventional wisdom that all of our economic woes are attributable to the middle class, the working people of America. At state and local governmental levels, a wedge issue to divide the electorate has been advanced; the cost of salary, pensions, and other benefits owed to public employees and their unions, is the cause of deficits. Never mind the fact that these benefits were not future funded by the folks in charge; now it is the responsibility of the public employees, and government must repudiate these debts.

Social security is not part of the federal budget since it is funded by a separate payroll tax.

But conservatives in congress now point to social security as an unsustainable obligation, ignoring the fact that for years the social security trust fund was “borrowed” to fund other projects and that the debt created to pay back these funds backed by the “full faith and credit” of the United States is to be ignored.

Increasing taxes on the most wealthy is apparently anathema. Still advancing the trickle down argument to protect the wealthy, the supposed job creators. But they have done nothing to create jobs of late but invest overseas. Ignoring the fact that the author of supply side economics has repudiated his own theory.

Clearly, all the solutions for our economic troubles are to be solved by imposing upon the working classes; entitlement programs to be gutted, tax breaks for the most wealthy are sacrosanct.Union busting is the answer.

Somehow, the penultimate line in William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech seems apt,

“...you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns.”