It should be called the Two Scrooges Theory, because it turns both parties into craven servants of the ultra-rich while making life steadily worse for the Tiny Tims of the world. Not only Santa, but Jesus, would be appalled at how we have utterly perverted the cause of Christmas, and Christianity, to serve only the billionaires.
2. Arthur Laffer -- onomonopoetic. Supply side econ was/is a scam.
3. Trump sayz that tariffs have brought in "trillions of dollars," and if true could pay the entire natiponal debt.
But, alas (and alack), this is an exaggeration; actual U.S. government tariff revenues have been in the billions of dollars annually. Experts state it is impossible to generate trillions in tariff revenue in a single year.
4. (And more importantly) It's Christmas Eve and millions of us are hoping to win the ultimate gift: Powerball's $1.7B jackpot.
This all breaks the history and logic down for us and simplifies it in a way we can understand. But the media will never pick it up and explain it for the public and the public cannot process so much information and history. Somehow it must be presented to the public in a way they can understand and accept that the Republicans are wishful thinkers, irrational calculators, and deceptive liars who refuse to use a rational process and science to determine public policy. They create an alternate reality and then push it with religious fervor, paired with actual religion and reactionary philosophy, until everyone is brainwashed and willing to fight the libs and the Democrats. Republicans are selfish, stubborn tantrum throwers who pretend that their views are the true and only way and they refuse to back down, regardless of circumstances. They must be sent to reform school and punished severely.
One thing about the National Debt that enables Thom's excellent description of our rigged economy is that it is nearly invisible to the average American, even to most above-average Americans. The National Debt is a matter of ultra macroeconomics. It does not show up in our bank statements, nor our income tax returns. It is a matter of out-of-sight-out-of-mind. I doubt that dementia victim Reagan was able to understand that, but his handlers sure did. Our current WH dementia victim appears to be equally clueless as well.
Trickle-down Economics as Reagan called it, is how oligarchic economies have always worked. And for all of recorded history, the peasants rarely noticed or objected until some disaster triggered government collapse or rebellion.
It is important to point out that the Democrats have been exploiting this same model too, but in a more kindly way. Nevertheless, Democrats are responsible for not installing permanent guardrails to prevent exploitation by billionaire monopolists. After all, they get re-elected on billionaire money too. If the Dems do not overturn "Citizens United" when next they have a majority, nothing more will ever change.
The national budget is not the same as the household budget. If you don't make a car payment or two, don't pay your mortgage or taxes, they will be repossessed and you evicted.
No country or sovereign fund can evict and repossess the United States, But what can happen is that we default on interest payments and redemption of our loans.
What happens though is our credit rating goes down, and Moody's has already downgraded our credit rating under Trump.
As the credit rating goes down, the interest rate will go up, to induce institutions, sovereign funds, central banks to buy our debt.
AFIK we are already issuing government securities to pay the interest on the debt, there is not enough money from taxes to pay the interest much less redeem old securities.
The increase in interest rates, including private debt like credit cards, is what causes inflation, not the supply of money, but the interest on debt, all debt public and private.
John Maynard Keynes viewed national debt primarily as a tool for economic stabilization, arguing that governments should borrow and spend during downturns (like depressions) to boost demand, create jobs, and overcome recessions, even if it meant deficits; however, he believed budgets should balance during booms to pay down debt, emphasizing short-term stimulus over long-term fiscal rigidity, famously noting, "In the long run, we are all dead"
In Japan suffered what they call the Lost Decade of depression and stagnation in the 1990's and rather than pulling in the belt and cutting social services, Japan invested heavily in education, With the result that when it pulled out of the depression, it was geared for an explosion in science and technology, and a boom followed.
Alas, while you are correct, the vast majority of voters are clueless about all that. Also, it is worth keeping in mind that FDR cannot come to the rescue next time. Perhaps even more important is our current P2P culture, where most people live beyond their means to have more.
Life has always been "You can pay me now or you can pay me later. But if you pay me later it will cost a whole lot more." Also, we were now in a global trade war started by our president. Countries are already looking at alternatives to trade with the United States of Assholes.
You and I were taught by our post-Depression parents to be frugal. Even in grad school, I only used my VISA card for emergencies like a car repair. Most people today have not understanding of how to live on less. Another Depression will be much harder to recover from.
It all started circa 1970, with the issuance of credit cards.
I married in 1961, had to threaten violence at Sears to get a revolving charge to buy a sofa.
The came gas cards, I had Gulf and Texaco, you could only buy gas. There was a Diners Card, but I didn't qualify, and the American Express card, again I didn't qualify and I had to pay to get one. And there was BankAmericard that came out in 1958, but again I didn't qualify, it became Visa in 1976, by then it was available to the general public, Master Card came out in 1966.
The publicly available credit cards are behind the explosion in consumerism and also inflation.
I lived in Panama in the 1970;s on an Americans salary it was a grand place to live, I would go to the market on Balboa pier on Saturdays and buy fresh veggies, a whole tenderloin and jumbo prawns. I could afford to have my suits and clothes tailor made. I was a Lieutenant paying alimony and child support and newly married.
Then around the year 2000 or so, Citigroup commenced a massive PR campaign to convince people to get a credit card.
It worked, and consumerism took off as did inflation, which was basically non existent before. I know a woman, a Panamanian naturalized, who would like to go back and live with her relatives, but even with her SS and CalPers retirement, she can't afford it, because of inflation.
The thing about Panama is that they really aren't sovereign though they think they are. The Bank of Panama, their central bank, is an offshore branch of Citigroup, authorized by the Edge Act of 1919.
The paper currency is the U.S. Dollar, the coins are minted in the Philadelphia mint of the same stock as U.S. coins, they call it the Balboa, and it differs only design on the obverse and reverse, otherwise it is the same coin and works in American vending machines.
And it is also why there was no national outcry when Bush sent special ops and airborne into Panama to arrest the CIA bagman Noriega.
If Panama had been a sovereign country that wold have been an act of war, requiring congressional approval, but Panama isn't and no one, even in the international community or media raised an eyebrow.
By the way, the Vatican embassy, on Avenida Balboa, was located next to the CIA bank, Merchant Marine Midland. and it was from the Bank grounds that they blasted music.
The national budget is not the same as the household budget. If you don't make a car payment or two, don't pay your mortgage or taxes, they will be repossessed and you evicted.
No country or sovereign fund can evict and repossess the United States, But what can happen is that we default on interest payments and redemption of our loans.
What happens though is our credit rating goes down, and Moody's has already downgraded our credit rating under Trump.
As the credit rating goes down, the interest rate will go up, to induce institutions, sovereign funds, central banks to buy our debt.
AFIK we are already issuing government securities to pay the interest on the debt, there is not enough money from taxes to pay the interest much less redeem old securities.
The increase in interest rates, including private debt like credit cards, is what causes inflation, not the supply of money, but the interest on debt, all debt public and private.
John Maynard Keynes viewed national debt primarily as a tool for economic stabilization, arguing that governments should borrow and spend during downturns (like depressions) to boost demand, create jobs, and overcome recessions, even if it meant deficits; however, he believed budgets should balance during booms to pay down debt, emphasizing short-term stimulus over long-term fiscal rigidity, famously noting, "In the long run, we are all dead"
In Japan suffered what they call the Lost Decade of depression and stagnation in the 1990's and rather than pulling in the belt and cutting social services, Japan invested heavily in education, With the result that when it pulled out of the depression, it was geared for an explosion in science and technology, and a boom followed.
Happy Holidays,Thom,to you, Louise and family, and for All of your readers too. Thank you for all the terrific work you did over the last year, and look forward to 2026🧑🎄✨🎄🎁
There's been a struggle over the course of American history between people who want the government to serve the interests of an elite, to serve those with wealth and power, and others who want the government to serve the general public. In the early 1980s, politicians on one side of this struggle began promoting the idea that the best way for the government to serve the general public was to get out of the way of corporations and their owners. They said that if you gave free rein to corporations, they could do things more efficiently and effectively than the government. They could do a better job than the government of taking care of people’s needs and satisfying their wants. And on top of that, they promised that corporations would provide people with unlimited opportunities for wealth and success. The promise was that if they were turned loose, corporations and individual talent and ambition would generate prosperity and progress for everyone. People bought into it, and it became the government’s guiding principle.
The government began a campaign to turn more and more of what had been the people’s power over to corporations. Laws and policies and regulations were written to help corporations grow and prosper with the idea that the public would benefit through increasing wages, opportunities, and social progress. Americans were led to believe the idea that the prosperity of corporations would trickle down to them, and that a rising tide of corporate profits would raise the standard of living for everyone.
Unfortunately, since the early 1980s when all of this began, most Americans haven’t seen any benefit. The prosperity that resulted has only enriched corporations and their owners. At the same time, ordinary citizens have ended up with less purchasing power, fewer opportunities for jobs that pay a decent living wage, and less support from the government. Life’s gotten harder for everybody except corporations and their officers and owners.
There hasn’t been any social progress as a result of our corporate-friendly government. Just the opposite has happened. It’s devastated American society. In America, the wealthiest country on Earth, the well-being of the people now lags behind other countries that are much poorer. The United States’ rank in access to quality basic education is a disgrace. American children get an education roughly on par with what children get in Barbados and Slovakia. The United States ranking in access to quality healthcare is a disgrace. Americans have health statistics similar to those of people in Greece and Malaysia. Life expectancy in America is falling. Most other developed countries have life expectancies that are either stable or increasing. They have better sanitation and internet access than America. The list of factors that impact the quality of life goes on, with consistently disappointing rankings for the richest country on Earth, the United States of America. The decline of the well-being of Americans since the people passed the reigns of government over to corporations is a national disgrace, and it’s a national tragedy.
Americans have been cheated out of the well-being that they should rightfully be enjoying as citizens of the world’s richest nation. The wealth of the nation that could and should be providing a much higher standard of living for Americans has instead been diverted to corporations and their owners, making them freakishly rich. This is because we’ve ended up with a system of government and laws that has been corrupted by them in order to make them wealthier and wealthier. Our democracy, which had been engineered by the Founding Fathers with the good of the people in mind, has been retooled into a corporatocracy to serve the interests of corporations and their owners instead.
This economy was designed and promoted by a type of manipulative, self-serving intelligence who promote themselves as the deserving.
We have been educated that Capitalism is the only honest, good way to live, with the truly smart (after all, they’re rich, aren’t they?) making all the important decisions that affect our lives. Socialism and (cringe) communism are for the soulless who will eventually go to hell.
Our controllers the mega-wealthy believe the majority worker-bee is too stupid to be either be educated or run a business of their own, much less, large conglomerate. That’s for the deserving, those who really understand business and how the world should work. The answer—gobble up all the small businesses until they no longer exist, at all—problem solved. Block assess to starting capital for small business, and make it so scary and regulated and with so few benefits, that most people opt for working at the big corporations. Where, who knows, you, may partially be reimbursed your health insurance premium—maybe.
Both parties have hurt the working class. The Democrats are LOUSY at marketing their messaging to counter the Republican blame theory developed during the Reagan administration. Every time a Democrat took office, the Republicans scream about the debt they created and demand that social programs get cut. The Democrats have NEVER developed a MESSAGE that hits the public and the media hard enough to point out the Bullshit of the Republican Party’s VooDoo economics.
We The People deserved better from the Democratic Party - more fight. But we didn’t get it. Now that party is perceived as “weak” and rightly so.
The problem is that the party is led and managed by professionals who are heavily embedded and have made careers and enjoy a standard of living of beltway insiders, the strategists, analysts like those who make appearances as "experts" (getting paid $10,000 a pop or more) on TV Wined and dined by lobbyists, showered with perks.
I can only hope that that $43,000 health care bill, hits the Trump humping, farmers and MAGAts, square in their face, but honestly do not believe that they will blame themselves, Trump or the Republican party. They will blame Biden, as Trump does as he deflects.
I have empathy for the non Trump humpers that will have to choose between health care and food and housing, but not for the Trump Humpers . Chickens came home to roost.
All is NOT quiet on the Western Hemisphere front.....
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq added nearly 5 trillion out of pocket and will balloon to 8 trillion with veteran expenses, budget expenses and interest paid. Sadly the Republicans' Santa has to be begged to get those benefits for veterans and the injured first responders.
And here they come again with The War Department expensively all geared-up for their plans to take Greenland/Canada all the way down through Venezuela/Columbia. TRump and billionaire TechBros and Crypto Creeps plan to spend us into oblivion in order to control us and the whole Western Hemisphere.
It is the Ho Ho horrible plan for a Technocracy not from Jesus but from hell:
We "elves" can have a social democracy. We deserve a social democracy after doing all the work. TRump and some oligarchs deserve coal in their prison stockings. See you in the streets. Add some anti-war signs.
If the rich get tax cuts then the next time tax cuts are to be brought up. They should equal the field and give tax cut to all. Let see where that puts us in the next 20 years.
Yes, that would be fair, but won't happen because of the deficit caused by the illicit transfer of wealth to those who have more of said wealth - and refuse to acknowledge that fact. And there is no more money in the national bank any longer.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. We are slowly being driven into autocratic slavery a la "1984".
Democratic leadership couldn’t sell heat at the South Pole, and Ken Martin assures us we’ve no dirty laundry to air. Repugnicans have brain washed their gullible base into believing that owning the Libs is all that matters. Memo to DNC: if you can’t help, at least stop undermining those who can.
Thank you, Thom, for your always clear accounts of what’s going on. I’m old, and I have lived through and actually remember all the twists and turns of our economy that you describe — and, simultaneously, I have suffered, along with everyone else, from the way things we could all afford and count on have become things we ourselves (I mean we boomers), not to mention our children and their children, can only dream about as they struggle to pay each month’s rising costs of literally everything! What I still cannot understand is WHY these Santa Claus ridiculous policies and deceptive actions that have taken place for decades right before our eyes and ears, and which you explain so precisely, historically, and simply, are NOT enunciated and repeated, in laymen’s terms and with daily banner headlines and all Democratic campaign speeches and bills put forward in Congress and statehouses. WHY do the national media fail to make sure that EVERYONE is aware of what is happening to them and how it all is being planned and manipulated? Americans are not stupid. If the press and all Democrats would simply lay out the plain truth — as you do in your books and columns — the “people” of this beautiful and benighted country would “get it!” But these clear, understandable facts are softened and blurred, ignored and misrepresented, and our one possible “cure” to the rampant Wanniski/Republican/Reagan/Bushes/Gingrich/Trump undermining of the U.S. economy and its citizens’ hope for their future is left almost entirely off the table. WHY?!? I don’t understand!
Well put questions... I suspect that there is no "party" guidance in the Democratic party anymore, and what altruism is still there is inefficient, and, like me, people are unaware until recently just how seriously affected we all have been affected to their detriment by "Wanniski/Republican/Reagan/Bushes/Gingrich/Trump undermining of the U.S. economy" now come to full poisonous flowering in the last few decades.
Are we too far down the road to pry back the massive gift given to the ultra-wealthy over the last 45 years? We should have been investing more in education so that more people would understand critical thinking instead of regurgitating simplistic slogans and racist memes.
Our economy was wounded in 1980 and began bleeding. The wound has been festering for far too long and gangrene is setting in. The best solution is to amputate the bank account of the rich that were fraudulently taken. Barring that, enacting higher taxes on the rich and corporations, but that would take time to claw back the national debt.
It should be called the Two Scrooges Theory, because it turns both parties into craven servants of the ultra-rich while making life steadily worse for the Tiny Tims of the world. Not only Santa, but Jesus, would be appalled at how we have utterly perverted the cause of Christmas, and Christianity, to serve only the billionaires.
Agreed
What BS.
1. The late Greg Trooper presents Muhammad Aii and the meaning of Christmas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FVRIWBSQXg
2. Arthur Laffer -- onomonopoetic. Supply side econ was/is a scam.
3. Trump sayz that tariffs have brought in "trillions of dollars," and if true could pay the entire natiponal debt.
But, alas (and alack), this is an exaggeration; actual U.S. government tariff revenues have been in the billions of dollars annually. Experts state it is impossible to generate trillions in tariff revenue in a single year.
4. (And more importantly) It's Christmas Eve and millions of us are hoping to win the ultimate gift: Powerball's $1.7B jackpot.
This all breaks the history and logic down for us and simplifies it in a way we can understand. But the media will never pick it up and explain it for the public and the public cannot process so much information and history. Somehow it must be presented to the public in a way they can understand and accept that the Republicans are wishful thinkers, irrational calculators, and deceptive liars who refuse to use a rational process and science to determine public policy. They create an alternate reality and then push it with religious fervor, paired with actual religion and reactionary philosophy, until everyone is brainwashed and willing to fight the libs and the Democrats. Republicans are selfish, stubborn tantrum throwers who pretend that their views are the true and only way and they refuse to back down, regardless of circumstances. They must be sent to reform school and punished severely.
One thing about the National Debt that enables Thom's excellent description of our rigged economy is that it is nearly invisible to the average American, even to most above-average Americans. The National Debt is a matter of ultra macroeconomics. It does not show up in our bank statements, nor our income tax returns. It is a matter of out-of-sight-out-of-mind. I doubt that dementia victim Reagan was able to understand that, but his handlers sure did. Our current WH dementia victim appears to be equally clueless as well.
Trickle-down Economics as Reagan called it, is how oligarchic economies have always worked. And for all of recorded history, the peasants rarely noticed or objected until some disaster triggered government collapse or rebellion.
It is important to point out that the Democrats have been exploiting this same model too, but in a more kindly way. Nevertheless, Democrats are responsible for not installing permanent guardrails to prevent exploitation by billionaire monopolists. After all, they get re-elected on billionaire money too. If the Dems do not overturn "Citizens United" when next they have a majority, nothing more will ever change.
The national budget is not the same as the household budget. If you don't make a car payment or two, don't pay your mortgage or taxes, they will be repossessed and you evicted.
No country or sovereign fund can evict and repossess the United States, But what can happen is that we default on interest payments and redemption of our loans.
What happens though is our credit rating goes down, and Moody's has already downgraded our credit rating under Trump.
As the credit rating goes down, the interest rate will go up, to induce institutions, sovereign funds, central banks to buy our debt.
AFIK we are already issuing government securities to pay the interest on the debt, there is not enough money from taxes to pay the interest much less redeem old securities.
The increase in interest rates, including private debt like credit cards, is what causes inflation, not the supply of money, but the interest on debt, all debt public and private.
John Maynard Keynes viewed national debt primarily as a tool for economic stabilization, arguing that governments should borrow and spend during downturns (like depressions) to boost demand, create jobs, and overcome recessions, even if it meant deficits; however, he believed budgets should balance during booms to pay down debt, emphasizing short-term stimulus over long-term fiscal rigidity, famously noting, "In the long run, we are all dead"
In Japan suffered what they call the Lost Decade of depression and stagnation in the 1990's and rather than pulling in the belt and cutting social services, Japan invested heavily in education, With the result that when it pulled out of the depression, it was geared for an explosion in science and technology, and a boom followed.
Alas, while you are correct, the vast majority of voters are clueless about all that. Also, it is worth keeping in mind that FDR cannot come to the rescue next time. Perhaps even more important is our current P2P culture, where most people live beyond their means to have more.
Life has always been "You can pay me now or you can pay me later. But if you pay me later it will cost a whole lot more." Also, we were now in a global trade war started by our president. Countries are already looking at alternatives to trade with the United States of Assholes.
You and I were taught by our post-Depression parents to be frugal. Even in grad school, I only used my VISA card for emergencies like a car repair. Most people today have not understanding of how to live on less. Another Depression will be much harder to recover from.
It all started circa 1970, with the issuance of credit cards.
I married in 1961, had to threaten violence at Sears to get a revolving charge to buy a sofa.
The came gas cards, I had Gulf and Texaco, you could only buy gas. There was a Diners Card, but I didn't qualify, and the American Express card, again I didn't qualify and I had to pay to get one. And there was BankAmericard that came out in 1958, but again I didn't qualify, it became Visa in 1976, by then it was available to the general public, Master Card came out in 1966.
The publicly available credit cards are behind the explosion in consumerism and also inflation.
I lived in Panama in the 1970;s on an Americans salary it was a grand place to live, I would go to the market on Balboa pier on Saturdays and buy fresh veggies, a whole tenderloin and jumbo prawns. I could afford to have my suits and clothes tailor made. I was a Lieutenant paying alimony and child support and newly married.
Then around the year 2000 or so, Citigroup commenced a massive PR campaign to convince people to get a credit card.
It worked, and consumerism took off as did inflation, which was basically non existent before. I know a woman, a Panamanian naturalized, who would like to go back and live with her relatives, but even with her SS and CalPers retirement, she can't afford it, because of inflation.
The thing about Panama is that they really aren't sovereign though they think they are. The Bank of Panama, their central bank, is an offshore branch of Citigroup, authorized by the Edge Act of 1919.
The paper currency is the U.S. Dollar, the coins are minted in the Philadelphia mint of the same stock as U.S. coins, they call it the Balboa, and it differs only design on the obverse and reverse, otherwise it is the same coin and works in American vending machines.
And it is also why there was no national outcry when Bush sent special ops and airborne into Panama to arrest the CIA bagman Noriega.
If Panama had been a sovereign country that wold have been an act of war, requiring congressional approval, but Panama isn't and no one, even in the international community or media raised an eyebrow.
By the way, the Vatican embassy, on Avenida Balboa, was located next to the CIA bank, Merchant Marine Midland. and it was from the Bank grounds that they blasted music.
Then along came
Created to pay Revolutionary War debts.
The national budget is not the same as the household budget. If you don't make a car payment or two, don't pay your mortgage or taxes, they will be repossessed and you evicted.
No country or sovereign fund can evict and repossess the United States, But what can happen is that we default on interest payments and redemption of our loans.
What happens though is our credit rating goes down, and Moody's has already downgraded our credit rating under Trump.
As the credit rating goes down, the interest rate will go up, to induce institutions, sovereign funds, central banks to buy our debt.
AFIK we are already issuing government securities to pay the interest on the debt, there is not enough money from taxes to pay the interest much less redeem old securities.
The increase in interest rates, including private debt like credit cards, is what causes inflation, not the supply of money, but the interest on debt, all debt public and private.
John Maynard Keynes viewed national debt primarily as a tool for economic stabilization, arguing that governments should borrow and spend during downturns (like depressions) to boost demand, create jobs, and overcome recessions, even if it meant deficits; however, he believed budgets should balance during booms to pay down debt, emphasizing short-term stimulus over long-term fiscal rigidity, famously noting, "In the long run, we are all dead"
In Japan suffered what they call the Lost Decade of depression and stagnation in the 1990's and rather than pulling in the belt and cutting social services, Japan invested heavily in education, With the result that when it pulled out of the depression, it was geared for an explosion in science and technology, and a boom followed.
Happy Holidays,Thom,to you, Louise and family, and for All of your readers too. Thank you for all the terrific work you did over the last year, and look forward to 2026🧑🎄✨🎄🎁
There's been a struggle over the course of American history between people who want the government to serve the interests of an elite, to serve those with wealth and power, and others who want the government to serve the general public. In the early 1980s, politicians on one side of this struggle began promoting the idea that the best way for the government to serve the general public was to get out of the way of corporations and their owners. They said that if you gave free rein to corporations, they could do things more efficiently and effectively than the government. They could do a better job than the government of taking care of people’s needs and satisfying their wants. And on top of that, they promised that corporations would provide people with unlimited opportunities for wealth and success. The promise was that if they were turned loose, corporations and individual talent and ambition would generate prosperity and progress for everyone. People bought into it, and it became the government’s guiding principle.
The government began a campaign to turn more and more of what had been the people’s power over to corporations. Laws and policies and regulations were written to help corporations grow and prosper with the idea that the public would benefit through increasing wages, opportunities, and social progress. Americans were led to believe the idea that the prosperity of corporations would trickle down to them, and that a rising tide of corporate profits would raise the standard of living for everyone.
Unfortunately, since the early 1980s when all of this began, most Americans haven’t seen any benefit. The prosperity that resulted has only enriched corporations and their owners. At the same time, ordinary citizens have ended up with less purchasing power, fewer opportunities for jobs that pay a decent living wage, and less support from the government. Life’s gotten harder for everybody except corporations and their officers and owners.
There hasn’t been any social progress as a result of our corporate-friendly government. Just the opposite has happened. It’s devastated American society. In America, the wealthiest country on Earth, the well-being of the people now lags behind other countries that are much poorer. The United States’ rank in access to quality basic education is a disgrace. American children get an education roughly on par with what children get in Barbados and Slovakia. The United States ranking in access to quality healthcare is a disgrace. Americans have health statistics similar to those of people in Greece and Malaysia. Life expectancy in America is falling. Most other developed countries have life expectancies that are either stable or increasing. They have better sanitation and internet access than America. The list of factors that impact the quality of life goes on, with consistently disappointing rankings for the richest country on Earth, the United States of America. The decline of the well-being of Americans since the people passed the reigns of government over to corporations is a national disgrace, and it’s a national tragedy.
Americans have been cheated out of the well-being that they should rightfully be enjoying as citizens of the world’s richest nation. The wealth of the nation that could and should be providing a much higher standard of living for Americans has instead been diverted to corporations and their owners, making them freakishly rich. This is because we’ve ended up with a system of government and laws that has been corrupted by them in order to make them wealthier and wealthier. Our democracy, which had been engineered by the Founding Fathers with the good of the people in mind, has been retooled into a corporatocracy to serve the interests of corporations and their owners instead.
You are so correct!
This economy was designed and promoted by a type of manipulative, self-serving intelligence who promote themselves as the deserving.
We have been educated that Capitalism is the only honest, good way to live, with the truly smart (after all, they’re rich, aren’t they?) making all the important decisions that affect our lives. Socialism and (cringe) communism are for the soulless who will eventually go to hell.
Our controllers the mega-wealthy believe the majority worker-bee is too stupid to be either be educated or run a business of their own, much less, large conglomerate. That’s for the deserving, those who really understand business and how the world should work. The answer—gobble up all the small businesses until they no longer exist, at all—problem solved. Block assess to starting capital for small business, and make it so scary and regulated and with so few benefits, that most people opt for working at the big corporations. Where, who knows, you, may partially be reimbursed your health insurance premium—maybe.
THis is NOT a "both sides now" version of this nation's budget history. Thom makes the differences of the 2 sides quite clear. Thank you
Jeffrey Hobbs's 2 Scrooges theory is obviously wrong
Both parties have hurt the working class. The Democrats are LOUSY at marketing their messaging to counter the Republican blame theory developed during the Reagan administration. Every time a Democrat took office, the Republicans scream about the debt they created and demand that social programs get cut. The Democrats have NEVER developed a MESSAGE that hits the public and the media hard enough to point out the Bullshit of the Republican Party’s VooDoo economics.
We The People deserved better from the Democratic Party - more fight. But we didn’t get it. Now that party is perceived as “weak” and rightly so.
The DNC is scrapping its autopsy of 2024 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/us/politics/dnc-2024-autopsy-democrats-ken-martin.htm
The problem is that the party is led and managed by professionals who are heavily embedded and have made careers and enjoy a standard of living of beltway insiders, the strategists, analysts like those who make appearances as "experts" (getting paid $10,000 a pop or more) on TV Wined and dined by lobbyists, showered with perks.
I can only hope that that $43,000 health care bill, hits the Trump humping, farmers and MAGAts, square in their face, but honestly do not believe that they will blame themselves, Trump or the Republican party. They will blame Biden, as Trump does as he deflects.
I have empathy for the non Trump humpers that will have to choose between health care and food and housing, but not for the Trump Humpers . Chickens came home to roost.
All is NOT quiet on the Western Hemisphere front.....
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq added nearly 5 trillion out of pocket and will balloon to 8 trillion with veteran expenses, budget expenses and interest paid. Sadly the Republicans' Santa has to be begged to get those benefits for veterans and the injured first responders.
And here they come again with The War Department expensively all geared-up for their plans to take Greenland/Canada all the way down through Venezuela/Columbia. TRump and billionaire TechBros and Crypto Creeps plan to spend us into oblivion in order to control us and the whole Western Hemisphere.
It is the Ho Ho horrible plan for a Technocracy not from Jesus but from hell:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:34227574
We "elves" can have a social democracy. We deserve a social democracy after doing all the work. TRump and some oligarchs deserve coal in their prison stockings. See you in the streets. Add some anti-war signs.
If the rich get tax cuts then the next time tax cuts are to be brought up. They should equal the field and give tax cut to all. Let see where that puts us in the next 20 years.
Yes, that would be fair, but won't happen because of the deficit caused by the illicit transfer of wealth to those who have more of said wealth - and refuse to acknowledge that fact. And there is no more money in the national bank any longer.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. We are slowly being driven into autocratic slavery a la "1984".
Democratic leadership couldn’t sell heat at the South Pole, and Ken Martin assures us we’ve no dirty laundry to air. Repugnicans have brain washed their gullible base into believing that owning the Libs is all that matters. Memo to DNC: if you can’t help, at least stop undermining those who can.
Thank you, Thom, for your always clear accounts of what’s going on. I’m old, and I have lived through and actually remember all the twists and turns of our economy that you describe — and, simultaneously, I have suffered, along with everyone else, from the way things we could all afford and count on have become things we ourselves (I mean we boomers), not to mention our children and their children, can only dream about as they struggle to pay each month’s rising costs of literally everything! What I still cannot understand is WHY these Santa Claus ridiculous policies and deceptive actions that have taken place for decades right before our eyes and ears, and which you explain so precisely, historically, and simply, are NOT enunciated and repeated, in laymen’s terms and with daily banner headlines and all Democratic campaign speeches and bills put forward in Congress and statehouses. WHY do the national media fail to make sure that EVERYONE is aware of what is happening to them and how it all is being planned and manipulated? Americans are not stupid. If the press and all Democrats would simply lay out the plain truth — as you do in your books and columns — the “people” of this beautiful and benighted country would “get it!” But these clear, understandable facts are softened and blurred, ignored and misrepresented, and our one possible “cure” to the rampant Wanniski/Republican/Reagan/Bushes/Gingrich/Trump undermining of the U.S. economy and its citizens’ hope for their future is left almost entirely off the table. WHY?!? I don’t understand!
Well put questions... I suspect that there is no "party" guidance in the Democratic party anymore, and what altruism is still there is inefficient, and, like me, people are unaware until recently just how seriously affected we all have been affected to their detriment by "Wanniski/Republican/Reagan/Bushes/Gingrich/Trump undermining of the U.S. economy" now come to full poisonous flowering in the last few decades.
Are we too far down the road to pry back the massive gift given to the ultra-wealthy over the last 45 years? We should have been investing more in education so that more people would understand critical thinking instead of regurgitating simplistic slogans and racist memes.
Our economy was wounded in 1980 and began bleeding. The wound has been festering for far too long and gangrene is setting in. The best solution is to amputate the bank account of the rich that were fraudulently taken. Barring that, enacting higher taxes on the rich and corporations, but that would take time to claw back the national debt.