| SELLING GUCCI BAGS IN A HOMELESS SHELTER |
| Well, Bush and his Republican cronies have pulled the wool over our eyes once again. Yet again, they’ve convinced the American people that it’s in our interest to make the simply rich, filthy rich, by giving them a 70 billion dollar tax cut. And let there be no doubt about it, as the children of poor and middle class people die in Iraq for huge oil companies that are gouging their mothers and fathers at home with $3.50 a gallon gas, Bush has pushed through a tax cut designed specifically for the rich. If you make $30, 000 a year, you get $9; if you make $75, 000 a year, you get $100; but if you happen to be one of those fortunate few who pull down a million dollars a year, you get $42,000. The American people must be out of its collective mind to allow these people to run a game on us like that. And what really gets next to me is, while the rich are getting this kind of kickback, I can’t even write off the interest on my credit cards—Reagan, that other gangster, took that from us. I’ve got to tell you—they say Bush is not all that bright, but he can certainly count. This guy puts Iceberg Slim to shame. Here’s the game they’re running. They’ve convinced America that if we give the rich enough money, they’ll use some of that money to create jobs. Now, I don’t claim to be an intellectual giant, and I haven’t spent more than 30 minutes studying Economics, but it doesn’t take a great mind to understand that demand fuels supply, not vice versa. If I made my living selling Gucci Bags, for example, I don’t care how much money you give me, I’m not going to produce any Gucci Bags if I being forced to sell them in a homeless shelter. It wouldn’t make sense, because no one would have the money to purchase them from me. The only way you’re going to get me to hire people to produce Gucci Bags is if you gave that money to the people in the shelter so they’d have the money to buy my merchandise. Reagan ran the same game on us twenty years ago with his now infamous “Reaganomics”—or, the “Trickle Down Theory” as they called it at the time. Supply- Side Economics was a scheme hatch by U.S.C. economist Arthur Laffer and the Reagan crowd which was supposed to cut the deficit and balance the budget. The theory behind Reaganomics was ostensibly, if you cut taxes for business and people in the upper tax brackets, and then deregulated business of such nuisances as safety regulations and environmental safeguards, the beneficiaries would invest their savings into creating new jobs. In that way the money would eventually "trickle down" to the rest of us. The resulting broadened tax base would not only help to bring down the deficit, but also subsidize the tremendously high defense budget. When the plan was first floated, even George Bush Sr., Reagan's vice president to be, called it "voodoo economics." Reaganomics, for the most part, sought to undo many of the safeguards put into place during the Roosevelt era and create a business environment similar to that which was in place during the Coolidge Administration. What actually took place, however, was even more like the Coolidge era than planed. Instead of taking the money and investing it into |