This will be generated by two recent occurrences:
1] The Bush Tax Cut giveaway to the rich.
2] The Cat-Food Commission report.
The two appear to be irreconcilable; unless of course your objective is to increase inequality.
The tax cuts scenario looks like they will be extended to the rich; possibly permanently depending on who 'wins' in 2012.
The cat-food commission calls for tax increases as well as austerity measures, cutting back benefits yet increasing such taxes on gasoline [which I agree with but not for the same reasons at all]. The aim is to increase the revenue and reduce the payouts.
If you couple the two together what do you get?
A bloody mess for one; and a turning upside down of social progress.
It's a subtle game [well if you call using a sledgehammer subtle]. If you increase basically sales taxes and reduce social security benefits whilst all the time increasing the pension age and then cut taxes for the wealthy who do not depend on these at all; what do you get?
In fact it is a shell game.
Designed to take from the poor and middle classes and give to the rich.
Across Europe we have been taking to the streets for very similar reasons but we don't have the 'added' value of the Bush tax cuts to really skew the game quite so much.
I keep asking myself just how far this has to go in the US before people wake up and really get protesting.
The aim of the cat-food commission
Reduce federal spending and increase revenue
The aim of the tax cuts
To give these savings to the rich.
I might say they are irreconcilable but that depends on your point of view, if I was looking to benefit the wealthiest of us then this is exactly what I would do, and it's a beautiful strategy devised by those who just purchased the US elections.
Couple these two ambitions with the citizens united decision and you gain a throttle-hold on the economy that will be nearly impossible to break.
I have often howled at the move right in DC which does not mirror the reality of all the polling carried out; this is because every lunatic turn by the GOP is mirrored by the Democratic Party chasing the new imaginary middle ground.
What this appears to be resulting in is austerity on the one hand and a giveaway on the other. Anyone mentioned fair tax coupled with a value added tax yet?
Sales taxes hurt the vast majority disproportionately and leave the wealthiest of us unscathed, cuts in social security do the same. Now you have to find even more jobs in a depressed market if you increase the retirement age, also you suppress wages. Now after you have carried out this knee-jerk austerity you give the revenue generated back to the top 1% not only have you not progressed you have increased the economic divide.
Class warfare you have it; and unless it is resisted there can be only be one winner.
I may be channeling Machiavelli; but someone is definitely playing 11 dimensional chess and they do not inhabit the White House, nor the hall of Congress; but just use them to do their bidding.
If someone mentions 'shared sacrifice' just laugh at them it ain't going to happen.
.
.