The Three Legged Stool.
Our economy is a very large and can be sort of understood if it is viewed as a three leg stool. Businesses spending, personal buying and government program spending are the three legs. If any one leg gets short, meaning, problematic, one or two other legs should make up the difference. This last recession saw two legs fail. Business spending and personal spending sank to such deep levels that we experienced a significant recession. To keep the economy running government spending needed to be increased. Government spending did increase to bail out very large businesses. Because the financial institutions were in deep trouble because they were at the root of the financial deficiency, they needed help right away also because they are seen by all to be the lubricant for the economic engine. Oddly, the financial institutions who gained a lot by the government stimulation plan and resulting infusion were greatly to blame for the economic collapse/problem. The tax payer instantly viewed the irony of giving aid to the very institutions that caused so many individuals to loose their jobs, homes, life savings, education plans for their children, and in total a set back if not diminish peoples futures would be hurt. To compound the insults to the American public, the financial institutions failed to adequately lubricate the economy when given large amounts of government money. The banks stood idly by not performing insufficient funding for business loans and not adequately renegotiating existing home loans down to lower more reasonable levels to make right individuals loosing their homes.
As the umbrella of irony hung over the American middle and lower class, there followed another anger toward the government, a collective reflection of what had just happened to this country. It is generally recognized that many individuals were angry for the US government bailing out the financial institutions for being greedy and the auto manufacturers for near incompetent planning (except Ford). Why should a citizen who was not responsible for a problem become an injured party and then has to pay for someone else’s errors and deficiencies? This anger helped build a platform which conservatives used to hoist themselves up high enough to promote their core political agenda. If one were to measure the Republican Party actions, we would see that job creation was not meaningful for their purposes and they even supported and worked toward eliminating middle class jobs. They supported and work hard to trimming social program work force populations including fire, police and school workers. This just does not make sense to diminish the employment of large segments of our population at the very time our unemployment rate is within five points of the great recession. We needed to rather quickly go into phase two and help the middle class and the lower class to gain employment to lubricate and run the economic engine in our communities. Moving backward by laying off middle class workers is just self serving and not best for this nation.
The vast American economy needs the huge engine comprising the middle class to spend money on product and manufacturing so the business cycle spins up again and is sustained. The Republican Party is so profoundly short sighted in at least two ways, taxes and deficit. They hear the rich pounding on them to not raise taxes. The rich have gamed the system by using the Republican Party machine to protect and enhance the rich peoples station in society. The Republican Party is the party of the rich for the rich and definitely not the middle class or lower class. The only thing that the Republican politicians can think to do is NOT allow the deficit to increase and raise taxes. They will do neither because the rich have gamed the system so completely with the Republican Party. The Republicans campaign will not raise taxes and not raise the deficit which runs counter to what is economically the best action for this country. Economists say that we needed a strong second stimulus. The rich do not stimulate the economy through their spending; the middle and lower class does this so much better. We need to get this economy going again quickly. We need stimulus to get the middle class on their feet and start spending again. The middle class needs jobs, plain and simple. Our country needs the middle class to become healthy again. We need to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for fire, police, medical, schools, colleges so those services do not diminish and we do not exacerbate the national unemployment levels. We also need to raise taxes on the wealthy to help diminish the deficit until we get out of this hole. We can best pay off the deficit when this county is running better and generating tax revenue from solid business growth and families that have jobs and thus can pay taxes.
Two more factors need to be part of the second stimulus. These two factors come out of how and where jobs are found and created in this country. First, jobs can increase when a business increases sales to the point that management needs to hire new workers. The second job increase factor is the start up of a new business. A compound effect can even be achieved if a new business is created and then it increases its work force. We need to encourage not just job creation but business creation. The Republican Party is fixated on rich pandering and not nation building.
The Republican Party takes actions that run counter to recovery and work against what is best for the middle class and this country because they are focused on only on “their” segment of the population. The Republican party only works for its constituency class, the rich, and not the whole country. It would seem that what seems best to Republican supporters and politicians is precisely what they envisioned as being core values to the Republican Party but at this time this attitude is not best for the United States. It is all about timing and the republican agenda stops this country’s forward recovery in its tracks. We are running out of time. We need to take our foot off the brake and apply the gas through job creation, tax the wealthy and allow the deficit to increase. The middle class and lower class suffer from Republican ideology issues which may be unsuited for this moment of time. We need both parties to work together with one aim in mind and that is work for what gets the best results for ALL Americans.