Reaganomics, NAFTA, CAFTA, Wall Street and greed!

As I usually do on Sunday mornings I watched Meet the Press. Now my wife would say that I spend the morning yelling at Meet the Press not watching. In today's world the disdain between the right and the left just never ceases to amaze me. It's never about what is right for the country or about the people back home that elected them it's about the party they belong and getting re-elected. And unfortunately we keep sending them back to Washington year after year for the same old results. Someday we may have a third party in this country that will actually represent the middle of the electorate not just the far right or far left.

I can honestly say that one of my favorite people in the world was Ronald Reagan and I feel he served our country well but he would not be happy today with the way the politicians use his name when they try to justify the way they do things now.

Let's take Trickle Down Economics as an example. If you lower corporate taxes it will stimulate their financial situation and they will spend more money on R&D, create more jobs, ect.

In theory and in a certain period of time this was right on the money....so why does it not work today?

1. Corporate taxes are already very low compared to the individual taxes paid in the US,

2. Today such a big amount is paid in bonuses to exec's that are beyond belief. Now I am a capitalist but how much money is someone really worth for a year at the helm of a corporation? Why is it that in our country today we ask airline employee's that are hard at work to take a pay cut and a reduction in benefits while we give the CEO that put them into bankruptcy a huge bonus to stay? I am not just picking on airlines here it is true with auto companies, insurance companies and the like.

3. NAFTA and CAFTA seem to only allow products into the US and creates jobs in other countries while reducing the number of jobs here in the US. They want and want and want from their employee's and then cut them loose when they move manufacturing to Mexico.

4. Wall Street seems to create so much of this. You get some analyst on Wall Street that has never run a company, never made a thing in his life, never had to make payroll or any other decision in a business yet he is making the decision on what the performance of a company should be. I remember not so long ago a major corporation turned in their best quarterly report in the history of the company but their stock took a 9% hit because they did not meet Wall Street expectations. Too many companies are worrying about Wall Street instead of their customers and their employees and the families those employees support. Maybe that is why the Fortune 500 has not had an increase in job creation for a long time.

5. A good example of greed is the belief that the rich are over taxed. Does a person making $300,000 a year pay more in taxes then someone making $30,000 per year? You bet they do but do they pay a larger amount by percentage of income? Recent studies show they actually pay less as a percentage. Now I am all for taking advantage of every tax break you can but don't whine about the amount you have to pay if you are making a good living. Don't want to pay it.......quit.....go to work for the government or a not for profit. If we did not have this fight over taxes, fixing Social Security would be easy. Just take off the income cap and pay social security taxes on all your income. Problem Solved.

Ok enough rambling on this topic for tonight. But if we really put our minds to it we could make this country even better then it already is today. I mean as frustrating as things can be someday's people still will endanger their lives to get here to chase the American Dream.