The International Monetary Fund (IMF), has finally conducted
comprehensive research and reported what every conscious human being on
Earth already knows like they know the Sun rises in the east …
That insane concept, known as Republican
trickle-down economics, has consistently failed to produce any benefits,
economic or otherwise, to the nation’s economic health or 98% of the
population. Although it is in no way a revelation, the world’s leading
economic organization, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has
finally conducted comprehensive research and reported what every
conscious human being on Earth already knows like they know the Sun
rises in the East; GOP trickle-down economics is a certifiable economic
disaster that reliably retards economic growth, kills jobs, and
increases income inequality.
The International Monetary Fund was created
specifically to reduce poverty around the world, secure financial
stability for all nations, promote high employment, and advance policies
that ensure sustainable economic growth long into the future. The IMF’s
purpose as an organization is contrary to conservative economics
because it does not focus on creating more wealth for the already
uber-rich or their highly-profitable corporations. The IMF was created
in 1945 and is governed and accountable to the 188 countries that make
up its near-global membership. It was America that conceived the idea of
an international organization that would develop a framework for
economic cooperation between the world’s nations to avoid a repetition
of circumstances that contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s;
circumstances Republicans continue promoting today without pause.
It is telling that regardless of the IMF or
America’s intent in the late 1940s to avoid another devastating
depression, including knowing exactly what not to do, Bush Republicans
embraced “trickle down” economics and increased the number of poor
Americans, decimated the middle class, retarded economic growth and
crashed the nation’s economy. Now, just six years removed from the
Bush-created Great Recession, the IMF issued a warning that the concept
of trickle-down economics not only increases the number of people in
poverty, it is a major obstacle to economic growth and obviously
increases income inequality.
In a new study conducted by IMF researchers, they
report something that, apparently, everyone on the face of the Earth
knows except America’s Republican Party and their wealthy conservative
funders; trickle-down economics are disastrous for any nation’s
economy. IMF researchers also found that the primary feature of
trickle-down economics, gross income inequality, not only “hollows out the middle class” and devastates “the poorest 20% of the citizenry,” it is the death knell for economic growth and a substantial majority of the population.
The IMF’s report focused on the idea that
trickle-down economics, and the income inequality it fosters, is always
bad, but it is especially bad for the people in the middle class and
those on the lowest rung of the income ladder. The organization’s
recommendation to spur economic growth, besides completely abandoning
the concept of trickle down as sheer folly and an economic death wish,
is helping the poorest 20% of the population by “raising the income share of the poor, and ensuring that there is no hollowing-out of the middle class.”
Preserving the middle class and raising the incomes
of the poor is frankly something the IMF, real economic experts,
President Barack Obama, Democrats, and any half-wit understands “is actually good for a nation’s economic growth.”
The IMF report went farther than just condemning ‘trickle down’ as bad
for everyone but the rich, the organization dismissed the entire concept
of “trickle-down economics” and advanced the President’s
belief that “the poorest 20% of citizens should make more money;”
something Republicans reject out of hand as absurd and patently unfair
for the richest one percent and their corporations. Republicans have
demonstrated time and again that they could not care less that their
absurd economic policy contradicts the blunt declaration of the IMF’s
report that “an increase in the income share of the bottom 20% is
associated with higher GDP growth” and greater economic stability,
because they are only interested in increasing the income share of the
rich that will never be sufficient until they have it all.
The IMF’s recommendations for economic prosperity
are anathema to Republicans who have fought tooth and nail against
proposals President Obama, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren,
Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, and all Democrats have
called for without pause; more investment in health, higher wages, and
further progressive taxation. The study found that, “Fiscal policy
already plays a significant role in addressing income inequality in many
advanced economies (that are not America), but the redistributive role
of fiscal policy could be further reinforced by greater reliance on
wealth and property taxes, more progressive income taxation, removing
opportunities for tax avoidance and evasion, and smarter targeting of
social benefits.”
The IMFs recommendations for economic growth, and
condemnation of Republican trickle down as damaging to an economy and a
population, are not untested theories or conjecture. A quick look at
Republican states that imposed harsh trickle down policies reveal that
not only are states like Kansas, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Louisiana in
dire financial straits, the people are suffering and getting poorer by
the day. Not only do Republicans oppose rolling back regressive taxation
that favors the rich, they have further taxed the poorest citizens in
an attempt to plug gaping budget holes created by severe revenue
shortfalls; shortfalls due to tax cuts for the wealthy and lack of
spending by the poor who earn slave wages and face Draconian cuts to
social benefits.
The IMF researchers could have saved themselves
time, and certainly some expense, in reporting on the damage ‘trickle
down’ wreaks on an economy by pointing out the Republican addiction to
the failed policy that decimated America’s economy in eight short years
of the Bush administration. If that was too old to be relevant, and it
is not, then the world organization could have cited the current
economic catastrophes unfolding in Republican-governed states such as
Kansas, although there are many, many others, that is clinging to
trickle down in spite of the damage to their economies and their
constituents.
Recently, in a futile attempt to cover gross revenue
shortfalls created by outlandish tax cuts for the rich, several
Republican governors and legislatures have furthered the dire economic
plight of the bottom 20% and middle class by instituting seriously
regressive taxation targeting those who can least afford even one more
economic attack; the poor and middle class. It is not that Republicans
in the states, and Congress for that matter, do not know their precious
trickle down agenda is retarding economic growth, killing job creation,
and creating hardships for the poor, they just could not care less.
Based on the imbecile residents who continue voting trickle down
Republicans in office, it appears that many Americans could care even
less that Republicans are crushing the economic life out of them.
One would like to think that all it would take for
Republicans to see the incredible error of their trickle down economic
agenda and damage to their constituents well-being is to read the latest
IMF report. However, it is not like there is anything new in the
international economic organization’s findings that are not in the
history books going back to the New Deal, or the period directly
following World War II when Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower
instituted progressive taxation that created America’s great middle
class and drove economic growth the likes the world, or America, has
never seen before or since then.
It
is a sad state of affairs for this country’s economy and the majority
of its citizens that it now appears that everyone on Earth understands
the folly of the Republican ‘trickle down” economic theory. The truth is
that at this juncture the only people on Earth who refuse to admit that
their precious ‘trickle down’ is a recipe for economic demise, greater
income inequality, economic devastation, and high unemployment, low
wages, and an increased poverty are Republicans. It is also a sad truth
that Republicans do, in fact, know their only economic agenda is
disastrous for all but the richest one-percent and their corporations,
they just refuse to admit it in a public forum where voters might hear
them laughing about an economic agenda the whole world knows is a raging
failure and yet is still popular among America’s incredibly stupid
Republican voters.
