As someone who does not plan to accept social security, ever, reducing the government's obligations to take care of those who have paid into social security won't kill me. I'll notice it, because there'll be a bunch of starving people too old to work, who had been counting on that money, but it won't affect me much...unless they start grabbing guns and shooting.
Oh, you mean lowering the taxes on companies will increase revenue and allow the government to make good on its obligations? Income goes down, but ability to pay bills goes up? I've heard this spiel before, in the 80s. Reagan called it 'trickle-down economics' and later they just called it Reaganomics.
The question is, does trickle-down economics work? The answer is, yes, it works great...if you're rich. I have a wealthy friend, and lord, he loved that theory. Not much that trickled into his bank account ever trickled out though. He just continued amassing wealth, and does so to this day. Oh, he *could* have hired a couple of more people to help around his resort. Instead, he pocketed that money. He'd be ecstatic to think that this economic theory is making the rounds again. Another chance for him to get even richer! The irony is, he's never complained about the tax rate he pays, never asked for it to be reduced. He was already quite happily rich (and I mean $30 million and more) and along came the government and said, 'Whoa there, pal, you aren't rich *enough*!' Who was he to argue? I wouldn't, and he didn't.
Now, how did Reagan pay for that massive transfer of wealth from everyone to the rich? By clamping down on a lot of stuff. For example, the social security my mother worked for her whole life, I was supposed to get that until I was 21, after her death. Instead, he passed a law killing it at 18. Well, thanks for taking three years of my social security and giving it to my rich friend. Probably bought him an extra bottle of really fine wine each month, and I'm sure he appreciated that, even though he hadn't asked for it, and even though it was my mother who had earned it. A small example of how he worked the transfer of wealth to the rich.
But that wasn't the *only* way Reagan financed that fiasco. He also added on to the national debt, to the extent that the debt our nation became saddled with under Reagan equalled all of the debt accrued for the first 200 years' worth of presidents *combined*. That was also, incidentally, why the first Bush had to go back on his word and raise taxes -- because Reaganomics had failed and driven us deeply into debt.
And so here we are...again. Lower taxes, reduce corporate penalties, and (somehow) more money will appear, and while the rich and the big corporations will do some serious reaping of wealth, the middle-class and the poor will *also* prosper. That's the spiel, but that's not how it works. It was tolerable when Reagan did it *only* because our debt load was much lower when he began driving it up (in effect charging money for the rich to the credit cards of the middle class). And even so, it wasn't until the end of the Clinton era that the mess was finally cleaned up. But now? Our debt is already enormous, and yet, having learned no lessons from the past, you would want us to try Reaganomics again, but this time beginning it when the economy is *already* in tatters?
Disaster incoming if someone resurrects Reaganomics, and that is a certainty. We don't need to theorize about it; we've already done the experiment, so we already know the results. Nobody wants to hear it, but paying your bills involves some sacrifice. Reaganomics didn't change that 25 years ago. There is no magic cure. You either come up with the money to pay your bills, or you don't. Giving corporations and rich folks big tax breaks doesn't make paying the bills any easier, it just means that they're not the ones paying the bills. Which is great if you're rich, but sucks for everyone who isn't, which is apparently 97% of us.
Of course..
