The Tax Cut Lie
Time and time again the GOP financed tax cuts with borrowed funds, running our national debt into the tens of trillions of dollars. Most of the federally subsidized tax cut dollars flowed to wealthy taxpayers who invested a substantial portion of these dollars in the stock market. According to DJIA historical data downloaded from the Macrotrends web site, the DJIA earned 9 percent per year from 1982 to 2019. Unfortunately, our economic growth declined 34 percent during this period compared to the economic growth between 1947 and 1981, when this historical data showed the DJIA only earned 5 percent per year.
Had the GOP chosen to use the federally borrowed funds for infrastructure projects to improve our transportation systems and electric grid, projects that are critically needed to sustain our economy and make America great again, much of those federally borrowed funds would have gone for labor provided by middle class citizens employed on the infrastructure projects. The GOP always uses our Treasury to support wealthy taxpayers, leaving our country in disrepair and the middle class further behind economically. The GOP is stabbing their own base in the back, while promoting the big lie that tax cuts are good for the economy.
Between 1982 and 2019 with wealthy Americans being taxed at rates between 28 and 39.6 percent, according to GDP and national debt data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve that I reviewed, the economy grew an average of 5.2 percent per year. However, between 1947 and 1981, when wealthy Americans were taxed at rates between 70 and 91 percent, the same Federal Reserve data showed the economy grew 7.9 percent per year. The GOP promoted subsidized lower income taxes on wealthy Americans with federally borrowed funds that drove our national debt into the trillions of dollars. These debt subsidized tax cut dollars flowed to the wealthiest Americans who used their federally subsidized dollars to invest in the stock market. The Federal Reserve data show that the combination of increased national debt and the federally borrowed funds being spent in the stock market, not in our economy, i.e. infrastructure improvement projects, resulted in reducing our economic growth by over 34 percent per year from 1982 to 2019 and denied thousands of middle class Americans good paying jobs.
It is time the news media and their high-powered investigative reporters explain the truth about tax cuts benefiting the economy. Tax cuts may spike the economy but have no lasting economic benefit. The forgone revenue stream resulting from tax cuts has been replaced with debt that grows every year. Borrowed funds the federal government spends on infrastructure projects would be spent in the economy, have a spill-over effect contributing to even more economic activity, and help make America great again. That tax cuts are good for the economy is a bigger lie than the one supported by the GOP about the recent Presidential election.
Can you think of other lies the GOP is foisting on the American public today, like the need to protect our elections from American citizens whose skin color happens to be black or brown?
