The Audacity of Cuts

Young Paul Ryan has a plan
EIEIO
And In that plan he has some Cuts
EIEIO
With a Cut Cut here, and a Cut Cut there
Here a Cut, there a Cut, everywhere a Cut Cut
Young Paul Ryan has a plan
EIEIO
Paul Ryan should work in a deli. He can deliver cold cuts faster than a baloney factory. But he’s not alone by a long shot. He is simply the point man for the Republicans who think cold cuts are the answer to America’s woes because to suggest that increasing taxes might be part of the answer is to fly in the face of conservative ideology: taxes are bad; tax cuts are good; government is bad; free enterprise is good.
If their god “Free Enterprise” aka “Free Market” were such a great, all-worthy god, why are so many people out of work two years after the economic meltdown? Why are the rich getting richer during this same period? Why is there so little trickle down? And why do Free Market worshippers continue to believe that by making the rich even richer that somehow that will result in a better life for the masses?
Blind faith in a system, any system, is a mistake. To believe that a final answer has been reached economically and that answer is Free Market Capitalism is simply dead wrong. Anything man invents or evolves is simply a link on an evolutionary chain, not a Nirvana. There is no perfect plane or car or atomic power plant. Tinkering must continue. Rethinking must occur if things are to improve. To make an economic system a holy untouchable is to render it a god. As Robert Frost said in his poem “The White-tailed Hornet,” “Won’t almost any theory bear revision?”
What Free Enterprise advocates do not take into account are the losers. They ignore losers; they blame them; they fail to take them into account; they let them eat cake. And eat cake they will. As George Orwell once said, “When you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want to eat something a little bit tasty.” And you end up with an obese nation, but that’s another topic even if it signals the essential difference between the rich and poor modes of thinking.
Rich people or winners have the privilege of being able to think long term and are patient about the future which will also belong to them if they play their cards right. Poor people are so focused on survival and instant gratification today that long term thinking is sheer luxury. Planning for the future is something to get around to tomorrow when there is enough food around for beyond today.
There was a time when poor people left home, even left their country to find a better life. It is still true for people who immigrate to America today. In the past when the United States was still being settled, if you ran into trouble, you could go west, find land, homestead it, and start a new life. Today there is no land to homestead. The West is settled. If you were a southern black, you could move north and find a job in a factory. Today, there are fewer factory jobs because many factories have moved abroad where cheaper labor can be found. The poor are essentially stuck without resources or wherewithal to make a move to a better life. They have mostly terrible schools in their neighborhoods, a fact which signals they have little means of escape even for the next generation.
Conservatives are all about conserving the status quo whereby they remain the winners and losers just need to find their bootstraps. Losing has to do with individual character and slothfulness, not a structural flaw in the system. After all, if the poor just started to develop some long-range plans, they too could succeed. The problem is you need to believe that tomorrow can be better in order to even consider long-range thinking. If you are just scraping by, a long range plan is less realistic than winning the lottery. That’s why the poor per capita are the most frequent players as a group. In many cases winning the lottery is their only hope.
Meanwhile, we’ll watch the Republicans try to save one of their own, this time Congressman Ryan rather than Private Ryan, as they foolishly and consistently tear down all those liberal bridges to nowhere called entitlements while their constituency, the Haves and Have Mores, bask in the sunlight of the conservative spirit.
Robin Hood must be rolling in his grave.