Why Republican economic policies always fail

During the most recent U.S. Republican administrations, the gap between the rich and the poor people in the U.S. has steadily widened. This is almost solely do to the ill-advised choices made by Republican politicians. This is not an accident, it is a result of the fundamental design of the Republican agenda.

(See: The gap between the rich and the poor grows in the United States, International Herald Tribune, March 29, 2007, www.iht.com/articles.)

Most of the millionaires who are making the most exorbitant profits may secretly acknowledge this reality but they arrogantly don´t care. As long as their own lavish income is rapidly increasing, they worry little about anyone else or the nation as a whole. This Social Darwinism greed is the opposite of patriotism. These politicians are not serving the public interest and their selfish attitude is very short sighted and materialistic. Whenever the wages and material well-being of the working people improves dramatically, the whole country benefits, including the most wealthy citizens. But when the middle class, the families living below the poverty line, or the unemployed who have no income or have their wages stagnate or their jobs moved overseas (to exploit cheap labor) at the same time that the nation´s most wealthy citizens (CEO´s and their political cohorts) shamelessly triple or quadruple their incomes, this only divides our nation and generates resentment. When the fundamental economic policies of our representative (?) government only achieves these special interest goals for a small minority of citizens, then our government is failing in its responsibility to the people who elected them. President Reagan was often called "Reagan Hood" because his economic policies robbed the poor and gave to the rich. It was George H.W. Bush (before he became Reagan´s vice president) that called Reagan´s Trickle-down economic policies ´Voodoo Economics´.

One year before the U.S. Declaration of Independence was written, John Hancock (by order of Congress) wrote a declaration to King George III of England in which Hancock said "… that government was instituted to promote the welfare of mankind, and ought to be administered for the attainment of that end." (Annual Register, Philadelphia, July 6, 1775).

The fundamental economic sanctions, seaport blockades (Boston), martial law, un-representative taxation and authoritarian regulations that King George III ruthlessly imposed on the American colonists, were designed solely to increase the wealth of the King regardless of the hurtful effects that they had on the common people in America. The King was getting smugly richer, while the working people in the colonies were getting robbed.

This was the economic reality that led to the Revolutionary War. This was the fundamental social injustice that was the basic principle echoed and reaffirmed in the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The American idea that government was instituted for the purpose of promoting the welfare of the common people, not the welfare of the rich, the luxuries of a King, a self-serving theocracy or an Imperial President.

For 200 years, our nation has steadily grown and prospered. And yet we must continuously endure cycles of growth and stagnation, of prosperity and recessions and depressions, which have repeatedly been the results of different opposing economic policies by different administrations. Those administrations that have enacted social programs and wage increases for working Americans have produced the periods of the greatest improvements in the standard of living for our nation. Those administrations that have opposed social programs and wage increases which benefit the general public have produced the periods of economic stagnation, recessions, depressions, rising unemployment and frustration.

The social contract between the government and the people is always a two-way street. The common people voluntarily agree to certain personal sacrifices when the nation faces a crisis. But this (often mortal) sacrifice by the people must be repaid by the government by promoting the general welfare, basic freedoms and the basic necessities of life. King George and many current Republican politicians have the ideology that the government contract with the people is a one-way street. The people should humbly serve the government, but the government has no obligation to serve the people.

´Trickle-down theory is an appropriate name for the Republican economic policies. The word ´trickle´ accurately describes the amount of economic benefits that the common people receive from these policies. Trickle implies a very small amount. Trickle is synonymous with little, not much, insignificant, minute, diminutive, undersized, unimportant, trivial, slight and trifling. These words all describe the amount of benefits that the public receives from these one-sided policies.

The fundamental principle (of John Kennedy) of stimulating the economy by reducing taxes for working people is an economic policy which almost always helps raise the standard of living for the majority of Americans and produces a growing national economy. This policy gives consumers more money to spend on all products produced by industries and agriculture. This simultaneously helps all businesses and increases tax revenue for the local, the state and the federal government.

The fundamental flaw in the Republican tax-cutting policies is that they don´t just give tax breaks to the working class people (which is good economic policy), but that they give the biggest tax breaks to the most wealthy segments of society including the wealthiest corporations, who don´t need more money. As a result of the last tax rebate given by the Republicans, the average working family received about $1200 while many millionaires received tax rebates of over $200,000. (The Republicans never offer any means to pay for these tax cuts and rebates and simply increase the national debt for the next generation. Like all financial debts, the national debt requires billions to be paid to the banks in interest for which the public receives absolutely nothing in return.) This only widens the gap between the rich and the poor and gives the least assistance to those who need it the most and gives the most assistance to those who need it the least.

This is contrary to the patriotic purpose of government that the founders of our nation proposed. The purpose of the government is to help the working people, not the most wealthy individuals or corporate special interests. The richest Americans already have comfortable lifestyles and most of them don´t want to share anything with anyone. Greed is apparently contagious. The principle of Social Darwinism is simply the belief that the rich deserve to be rich and the poor deserve to be poor and the strong deserve to survive and the weak deserve to perish. This fallacious sociologic theory was not created by Charles Darwin (a biologist), it was created by the sociologist Herbert Spencer. (It should have been called ´Social Spencerism´.) Darwin was not so callous as Spencer. Darwin recognized that social moral values must override ´the law of the jungle´. Many imperialistic nations and dictatorships have accepted Social Darwinism as an excuse for ethnic cleansing and discrimination. Republicans politicians are Social Darwinists. They are conservatives without a conscience.

The common people must be loyal and patriotic to our nation. But the government must also be patriotic. This requires that the government must be loyal to the common people.

Besides the fundamental social injustice of the Republican economic policy of helping the rich Americans more than helping the poor or average Americans, the policy never works to help our nation. Republican politicians always argue that by increasing the profits of corporations they are helping the national economy. This is a false economic analysis because these policies only help to increase the incomes for a few individuals and the wealthy investors who own stock in the booming companies. The working Americans and the majority who don´t own any company stock, don´t share in the corporate successes. (In other words, in Reagan´s Trickle-down theory, nothing trickles down). In the most recent cases, the increased profits of the corporations actually were made at the workers expense by moving the corporations overseas, by stagnating wages, reducing employee´s benefits, by automation or by downsizing and laying off employees. Corporate profits may increase during Republican administrations, but workers wages don´t share in these increased profits. These Republican policies only increase the gap between the rich and the poor. (This is a well-established statistic in Republican administrations.) These policies also reduce government income by reducing the amount of tax revenue which results from reduced consumer spending, lower wages, unemployment and corporate relocation outside of the U.S. The government revenue is also reduced by the Republican policy of reducing taxes for corporations. By reducing the total revenue of the government, the government is forced to reduce all spending on social programs which are designed to help the majority of working Americans. This is also not an accident. This is a basic strategy of the Right Wing policy makers. The Republican agenda actually boasts that they are determined to reduce or eliminate all social programs and working class financial assistance. These Republican policies and programs reduce financial aid to those who need it the most. This action tightens the belts on working class family budgets and forces them to reduce spending on all consumer products. This inevitably produces a national recession.

Unfortunately there are too many complacent members of Congress who are millionaires that never bother to read the letters and emails from their unhappy constituents. (Write a letter to your Congressperson and the only thing that you´ll get in return is a standard form letter from their secretary.) The dysfunctional U.S. Congress today is more similar to the British House of Lords in Parliament that only represents the King and the nobles and has no interest in the common people.

The Republican economic policies are deliberately designed to reduce or eliminate all government programs created to help the working people. One Republican politician boasted that they wanted to reduce government down so small that they could drown it in a bathtub. Republican politicians who dislike government can never do a good job managing that same government. One must wonder why a Republican politician chooses a career in politics in the first place? A politician is by definition a public servant. Those who don´t want to serve the public should find another line of work.

During the two administrations of GWB, the Republicans have had control of the White House, the U.S. Congress and to a great extent, the U.S. Supreme Court. This has been a period when the Republican politicians have had free reign to do almost anything that they wanted to do and most of the time they have done exactly that. In Congress, Democrat politicians were blocked from participating in almost everything. The Republicans have been able to pass almost all legislation that they wanted and to block or veto anything that they didn´t want. They have done almost everything the Republican agenda demanded economically, domestically and in foreign policy. This has been a time when the Republicans have had every opportunity to demonstrate the claimed superiority of their policies and theories.

These were not just Bush-Cheney policies, they are Republican policies. These are all directly related to economics and the Republicans have taken exactly the wrong position on every single issue. None of these have been good for our nation. The present dire state of the average American family is proof of this.

Environmental laws were repealed or ignored to help corporations increase their profits. These policies have accelerated global warming, increasing hurricane strength, produced flooding along major U.S. rivers, destroyed crops by flooding, increasing droughts and wildfire seasons. Bush administration lawyers have blocked all of California´s legislation enacted to improve air quality.

Corporate taxes were reduced so that companies could increase their profits. This greatly reduced tax revenues for the state and federal government and resulted in creating budget deficits. This reduced the money needed for police, public services, education, health services and infrastructure repairs.

The wealthiest Americans received huge tax cuts and rebates. The poorest Americans received tiny tax breaks and small rebates. The rich simply hoarded their money while the poor used the rebates to pay their monthly bills and buy food and gas.

Social programs were under-funded, eliminated, down sized or simply ignored. Single working moms have been forced to work longer hours or have two jobs to pay the monthly bills.

Bankruptcy laws were changed to financially benefit the Banks and make it more difficult for families facing emergencies to survive. These new laws were unnecessary because in almost all bankruptcy cases the banks already break even and have no financial losses. The bank interest and finance charges are so high that they have already been repaid more money than they loaned the customer in the first place.

Mortgage companies and banks were given greater freedom in their lending practices. This deregulation eventually produced corruption and a collapse in the housing market. Hundreds of thousands of American families lost their homes.

Energy policies were decided (and sometimes actually written) in secret meetings by the energy companies with Vice President Cheney (a former CEO of Halliburton).

Auto manufacturing companies were allowed to postpone developing more fuel efficient vehicles and continued to build inefficient SUV´s, trucks and HUMMERS. This has made the U.S. more dependant on foreign oil. Republican strategy has been to increase oil usage (and coastal oil drilling) instead of reducing oil dependency. More fuel efficient engines have been available for decades and have been in use in many European countries, but the U.S. continues to ignore them. Decades ago cars were built that actually got 50 miles per gallon. Today the average American manufactured car gets about 25 miles per gallon. This is directly responsible for the current atmospheric pollution in our major cities and all of the health issues related to smog.

In New Orleans Louisiana, along the entire Mississippi River and along the Sacramento River in California, there was little money authorized to repair deteriorating levees. The levees along the Sacramento River in California are a disaster waiting to happen. These critical levees are a hundred years old and are in a continually worsening condition while increasing numbers of homes are being built adjacent to them. All of these levees could have been repaired for the amount of taxpayers money being currently spent monthly in Iraq.

The administration scoffed at the idea of global warming and now increasing temperatures in California has spawned over 1700 wildfires destroying hundreds of homes and buildings and resulting in numerous deaths.

In foreign policy, GWB started two wars with OPEC nations, in Afghanistan and Iraq, even though the OPEC nations were at that time selling cheap oil to the U.S. ($27 per barrel). It´s not a coincidence that ever since the U.S. invaded these two OPEC nations, that OPEC has been steadily raising the price of oil (currently about $137 per barrel). Didn´t the administration learn anything from the Yom Kippur war (1973-74) when the U.S. supported Israel and the OPEC nations increased (doubled) the price of oil causing a global recession? This time OPEC has continued to raise the price of oil and will continue to do so until the U.S. either goes bankrupt or stops trying to seize control of Middle Eastern oil. As long as the U.S. is dependant on foreign oil, OPEC can use oil as a political weapon. Iran (or any OPEC nation) doesn´t need nuclear weapons as long as they have oil. They can do more damage to the U.S. economy simply by raising the price of oil, having an oil embargo or sinking a single oil ship.

The majority of people in the Middle East have always known that the U.S. invaded Iraq solely for economic reasons. U.S. foreign policy decisions are always based solely on economics regardless of the official White House claims. (Dozens of reasons were offered for the invasion of Iraq and they all turned out to be false.) Bush and Cheney (both former oil company executives) were ill-advised that gaining control over Iraqi oil would be relatively easy. The last five years of chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan has shown that this was a tragic blunder.

This is only a small sampling of the daily disasters caused by Republican economic related policies. Since they have been in complete control of all U.S. foreign and domestic policies, the Republican politicians can blame no one except themselves.

There are a few wealthy Americans who are better off today than they were eight years ago, especially those working at Halliburton (who continue to receive no-bid multi-million dollar contracts in Iraq). But the other 99% of Americans are facing economic disaster. In California, a gallon of gas is almost $5. Millions of Americans who are earning minimum wages can no longer afford to drive to work. It costs more to fill up their car´s gas tank than they earn working. On top of this extraordinary expense, the price of gasoline is causing many food prices to skyrocket. Shrinking family food budgets are forcing many shoppers to buy generic brand low price foods which are often less healthy. A recent news broadcast showed people lining up to buy groceries at a local 99 cent store.

This national failure is bigger than Bush and Cheney. All of the Bush-Cheney policies are strictly based on Republican philosophy and ideology. This is a national failure of the Republican party. It´s a failure of every single Republican politician who has been promoting the Republican ideology. This Right Wing ideology has abandoned the fundamental principles that our nation was founded on. This ideology no longer serves the welfare of the people. It serves only the top few percent of Americans who are the richest and most powerful. Billions of taxpayer´s dollars go to the government, but nothing ´trickles down´.

To summarize, Republican economic policies are not designed to help the majority of working Americans. In this goal they always fail. They are designed to help the minority of wealthy Americans who are already rich. In this goal they unfortunately succeed (unfortunate for the majority). This is a one-way street to a dead end.

Republican economic policies are essentially the same as those of King George III in 1775. Their sole goal is to help the rich get richer at the expense of the struggling hard-working majority of Americans.

This is not the vision of our government that John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson and the other founders of our nation envisioned in 1776. It´s the very principle that they opposed.