All those spending cuts Republicans are proposing will do nothing to help the jobs situation. In fact they will make it worse. It will take government spending, not eliminating the jobs of public workers like teachers to both create new jobs and maintain old ones. Unlike Keynes I don't propose deficit spending to create jobs. I propose taxing those who already have jobs particularly those who make vast amounts of money like hedge fund managers and corporate CEOs. Taxing those who have a job will not result in their losing their jobs. It will just result in a slightly lower standard of living. If by so doing jobs can be created without adding to the deficit, economic activity will increase and the tax base - and hence government revenues - will be augmented. The pump will have been primed. But just cutting government spending and reducing the tax base by giving more tax cuts to the rich will diminish the number of jobs as people get laid off because of the spending cuts. It's a vicious circle with a built-in race to the bottom - the bottom being no public services or investment in infrastructure or support for those who are destitute.
And on what grounds are the Republicans asking for tax cuts and spending cuts at the same time? Tax cuts reduce the revenues that government needs not only to function at the present level but to increase the number of jobs created by investments in infrastructure and needed public services. Do you really think that the rich, having their taxes reduced, are going to create jobs? That myth has been totally shattered by looking at the historical facts. That tax cutter, George W Bush, created a total of zero net jobs during his eight years in office. At the same time he doubled the national debt. If Republicans have their way, the number of jobs will diminish at the same time that spending cuts will result in the nation as a whole becoming more impoverished. It's a race to the bottom. Spending cuts reduce the number of jobs which reduces the tax base which reduces government revenues which leads to another round of spending cuts and round and round we go until we spiral downward in a race to the bottom and Third World status. We will become a nation mostly comprised of serfs and peons with a small number of corporate overlords.
Some people are doing fantastically well. Those people can certainly be taxed and the money spent to provide jobs for others. This will prime the pump of the economy, and allow the US to work its way out of the hole we're in. Doing the opposite - cutting taxes and reducing government investment - will further accelerate the downward spiral. The wealthy just are not going to create jobs. Far from being the job creators, they are the job destroyers at least of American jobs. Most of the jobs they create are in foreign countries. Most of their (private) investment is in foreign countries. Most of the money they make is made outside the US and so they pay no taxes on it. Their lobbyists see to it that that loophole remains open. So both as a source of government funding and as a source of job creation, they are a total waste and a total loss, but they are determinimg government policy. Who is advancing the countervailing theory that what is needed is more taxation of those who can afford to pay and more job creation spurred by the Federal government? No one. Certainly not President Obama. He subscribes to trickle down economics - a theory that has been disproved and discredited by history.
The US is literally falling apart. Teachers are being ruined by spending cuts to education. Doubling classroom sizes will drive them to insanity. It's absolutely nuts. Obama is not taking a stand. He is standing by while Republican governors are obliterating unions and, therefore, the middle class. He pledged to put on "comfortable shoes" and walk the picket line with union members, but he couldn't be farther away from that campaign rhetoric. Where was he when the protesters in Wisconsin were out in the streets? He probably couldn't find his comfortable shoes but I'm sure he was looking for them just like Bush looked for the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Just where could those comfortable shoes be? Not over here. Under the bed? Nope, not there. Let's see ... A few voices crying in the wilderness are advancing the thesis that loopholes need to be closed that allow corporations to pay a lower share of total taxes than at any time in history. But those voices are by and large falling on deaf ears. A large number of Americans would rather vote for the party that proposes to let them hold on to their guns and is against abortion and gays even though this party is screwing them in their pocketbooks. They vote against their economic interests either because they swallow the hogwash that the wealthy are the job creators or because they believe the right wing echo chamber of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck or because they don't realize what is happening to them.
If tax cuts and spending cuts become the modus operandi, the US can expect an economy in ruins by 2012. Obama's chances of being reelected will be toast. The resultant Great Depression will make the last Great Depression seem like a walk in the park. At least the less urbanized folk of the 1930s could grow their own vegetables and raise a few chickens. Today urbanized and suburbanized Americans are dependent on having all their needs met by the market economy. Their level of self sufficiency is near zero. As more and more fall out of the middle class, they go straight to homelessness and excruciating poverty not to a deurbanized level of hard self sufficient work. They go to nonwork and a dependency on charitable handouts most of which will completely vanish under Republican auspices. Homeless shelters will close due to lack of funding. The homeless will be forced to steal food. Republican charity? - forget it - it's an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms - there is no such thing as Republican charity. Will the billionaires among us provide charity for the poor once government funding dries up? I doubt it. I doubt they have the resources to pick up the slack once government spending has diminished due to the downward spiral. The one thing government will continue to spend on though is the military-industrial complex. We have to make sure the American people are fully protected even though they may be starving to death and dying in the streets due to lack of health care. And Republicans will reduce the size of government by outsourcing its spending on the military to private corporations. See, no government spending. Just corporate spending (with public money). Miraculously, jobs are created in the private sector (funded by public money). Yea, Republicans - you will have reduced the size of government and increased the number of private sector jobs. The collusion between government and corporations will be complete. There will be no hue and cry about deficit spending as the deficit continues to skyrocket. The right wing echo chamber will suddenly be mum about deficit spending. But that's OK as long as the deficit spending is on the military. We Americans cannot be too safe even if we are starving in the process.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt had the right idea in the 1930s: tax the rich and use the money to provide jobs for the poor and middle class. The Republican philosophy of cutting government spending and giving tax breaks to the rich will guarantee that the US will become a third rate nation with large numbers of destitute people where once there was a middle class. When Obama is defeated in 2012, the new Republican President will be sure to cut spending (on the public) even more in order to give more tax breaks to the wealthy and increase spending on the military. The right hand giveth; the left hand taketh away. The US will become a nation of destitute peons with enormous military capabilities.