Here they come a waffling
Last night I watched Jon Stewart mock Bush’s position on the bailout. It went something like this:
(Clip of Bush at a press conference)
“I’m normally against big government, but after consulting with my advisors, I think this is the best thing to do.”
(Back to Jon Stewart)
[imitating Bush's accent] “It’s like, normally I love Jesus, but after consulting my advisors, ‘Hail Satan!’”
——
In the last couple weeks, we have witnessed republican leaders having a huge change of heart. Historically the party of small government, republicans have suddenly changed their tune, and are now singing the virtues of this bailout.
But wait just a minute! This is exactly the kind of government meddling they have been fighting all along. They have always been the party of capitalism-is-so-great-it-will-resolve-everything-if-we-just-keep-our-hands-off.
So why the apparent change in ideology? Is this just an epic flip-flop?
I don’t think so. I think that it is totally in line with what their policy has tacitly been all along: ‘fuck the poor’.
It just so happens that the market forces tend to favor the rich, and deregulation allows them to drift further in that direction. So deregulation and small government usually align perfectly with conservative ideology of coddling the rich. However, as soon as it’s in the interest of corporations/the business class/plutocrats to have BIG government (i.e. the bailout), conservatives show their true colors, and default back to ‘fuck the poor’, suspending their supposedly unswerving devotion to small government.
So what they are doing is, in fact, entirely in character.
If the economy is in the shitter and people’s houses are being foreclosed on, and nobody can afford an education or a car, the natural thing to do is to give $700,000,000,000 to a bunch of gluttonous companies right?
What if we cut out the middle man? That is to say, just abandoned the idea that by pulling economic strings, bailing out this company here, lowering that rate there, we would eventually put more money in the pockets of American citizens, and instead, we just put the money right into the pocket of the American citizens?
Nah, you can’t do that, the people didn’t earn it
Response:
1. Wouldn’t that be good; if people just had money to blow, isn’t that the kind of injection into the economy that we would want? (à la stimulus package)
2. Since when do we value companies lives over people’s lives? Why are these companies, who obviously made grievous mistakes, more worthy of a handout than a citizen? Conservatives are perfectly happy to use that “you’re on your own, if you fuck up, it’s your own fault, and the government shouldn’t help” line against citizens who are down and out, why not give the same tough love to these companies?
What if we just gave all of that $700,000,000,000 to the work force. Let’s say, people between the ages of 20-64. They make up 60% of the population (according to Wikipedia), so that is 180,000,000 people.
$700,000,000,000 ÷ 180,000,000 people = $3,889 dollars/person
That would pay off a lot of people’s credit card debt.
Or how about this, pay that money to everyone making less than $25K a year (42% of the poplulation [sad isn't it?])
They would all get $5,555. That would mean that for 2009-2010, 42% of the popluation’s yearly income would increase by 22% or more. That is a hell of a raise!
But no, people don’t deserve money for nothing. Organizations that make a handful of people obscenely rich deserve free money. But people don’t.