The Wrong Argument

I don't know if I can do this.  Since I found out Governor Fatpants from New Jersey isn't running for President, I can barely muster the will to get out of bed in the morning, let alone write anything.  Now who will save us from the scourge of socialism and health care?  Did the Republican party really try hard enough to get him to run?  I hope they at least offered him a lifetime supply of pudding.  But, alas, I push on, with hope that this futile exercise in creative writing will somehow heal my wounded heart.

Speaking of socialism, the President is smack in the middle of his nationwide "Pass this Jobs Bill" tour.  It's like he's a kindergarten teacher..."See these unemployed people right here in front of me?  They can have jobs working on this crappy bridge right there behind me.  Does everyone understand, children?  People (points to people) can have jobs fixing bridges (points to the bridge), and then we get better bridges and more jobs.  See?  It's like if you were sitting there with nothing to do, and there was a pile of Lincoln Logs next to you.  If you started building something with the Lincoln Logs, then you'd have something to do AND you'd get a Lincoln Log cabin.  Does that make sense?" 

But there's a problem (spoiler alert!)...Republicans don't want to do the jobs bill thing.  I'm tired of being mean to Republicans.  They're jerks and most of them don't appear to have working brains, but there doesn't seem to be anything we can do about that.  On the other hand, I think the President could be better at this because I think he's making the wrong argument. 

I felt the same way about health care.  Liberals kept arguing that health care is some kind of inalienable human right.  I'm not sure I even believe in inalienable rights.  We get the rights we earn, there's no space god up there handing out inalienable rights like Halloween candy.  We need universal health care because it's an embarrassment for the wealthiest nation in the world to have millions of citizens who can't afford basic health coverage.  We should be ashamed of ourselves, but our leaders don't really feel shame.

I feel the same way about energy.  Energy innovation isn't about growing a green economy and creating jobs.  Where did we get the idea that everything has to be profitable all the time? It's about being a world leader in figuring out what we're supposed to do when we run out of oil.  Ideally, before we actually run out of oil. 

Just like health care and energy, infrastructure spending is about doing the things we should be doing if we fancy ourselves the greatest, most awesomest, most amazingest nation in the history of the Universe.  But then there's the question of how we pay for it all.

A corollary to this jobs bill debate is the debate about raising taxes on the rich, and again I think I'm hearing the wrong argument.  The President and liberals keep saying the rich and corporations need to pay their fair share.  That's nonsense.  I don't know what a "fair" tax rate is for a millionaire, and neither does anyone else.  Life's not fair, and even if it was, taxes aren't about fairness.  Taxes are about paying for the society we want, which we currently don't have enough money to support.

Republicans and the tea people say we just need to cut spending to balance the budget, but that's nonsense too.  No serious person has a real proposal to balance the federal budget, and even if we did get a balanced budget for a year or two, it wouldn't last.  We'd have some new big disaster, or start another war (what are you looking at, Iran? You got a problem!?!) and then we'd be right back to deficit spending. 

We need more money.  The truth is, we may all eventually have to pay higher taxes, but the wealthy have to go first, because they have all the money and contrary to what stupid people think, you can't grow the economy by robbing from the poor to give to the rich. 

That's my argument to the tea people, Republicans, the wealthy and anyone else who responds to everything by telling me they "believe in lower taxes" (as if lower taxes are something you believe in like a fucking Nostradamus prophecy).  You can live in a garbage dump and pay no taxes, or you can live in America.  But if you want to live in America, you have to pay the toll and stop bitching about it.