dagblog - Comments for "Bring The Pain"

! Au bon pain? What's bread

EmmaZahn — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 16:04:54 +0000

! Au bon pain? What's bread got to do with this?

Good points, but I think we

Anonymous Peter Schwartz — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 20:43:06 +0000

Good points, but I think we go around and around because beginning assumptions are so very different...

Conservatives start from the position that ALL the money they get is THEIRS and by virtue of their hard work and smarts. They EARN it.

They agree to give up some of what is THEIRS to fund the government. But still, it's THEIRS, and they're simply agreeing to give it up to fund the government.

(Or, a more radical position, this money is confiscated from them and given to others who didn't earn it.)

So tax cuts, in these terms, aren't ways the rich "make" money; they are ways the rich get to keep more of what is theirs to begin with.

I like this revision of your

Michael Wolraich — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 19:31:37 +0000

In reply to Bring The Pain

I like this revision of your shared-sacrifice position from last week. It turns the day-of-reckoning narrative on its head. Who was living too large for their own good? Not the poor or the working class. It was the upper middle class with their swollen McMansions, the rich with their private jets, the banks with their dangerous investments, etc.

I would just add one more element to complete the story. These folks did not fly so high by flapping their arms. Uncle Sam paid their lavish lifestyles courtesy of the Bush tax cut. It's insane that we have allowed conservatives to present the "temporary" reduction as the new status quo. Because of this tax disaster conceived and executed by our former Republican president and legislature, the U.S. debt ballooned and the economy overheated, forcing Obama to spend even more to bail out the spendthrifts. So hell yeah, the biggest beneficiaries of the tax cut should pay for the damn debt. They're the reason we have it.