Have We Bought Enough Yet?

“Obama could have, instead of giving money to these large mortgage holders, said ‘We will pay off all mortgages up to $300,000.’ It would have cost far, far less than what they gave the banks.”

This is an excellent idea. The only thing wrong with it is that in this country we consider it morally wrong to give money to people who aren’t already rich. Only the rich and corporations are morally worthy of government largesse.

As far as the government is concerned, us commoners can fuck off; they’ll bail out Wall Street, but we don’t give them enough campaign contributions to be worth the investment.

Also, it would go against the interests of the very rich to question the benefits (to the very rich) of ‘trickle down’ economics. (For those not familiar with the term, it is a Reagan-era idea that if we give all our money to rich people, they’ll give a little of it back to everyone else. It remains very popular, with rich people, despite the resounding proof over the decades that that whole ‘give a little of it back’ part never happens.)

The way out of an economic downturn is to put money in the hands of people who will actually spend it; the common folks. Trickle UP. We’ve known that for generations. (it’s how we got out of the Great Depression; Social Security money and wartime mobilization jobs.) But what we actually do is give money to rich people and corporations. The only people that benefits is the rich and their corporations. So why do we do it?

Why do our legislators only do things that benefit the people who give them massive amounts of cash every year? Hmm. I’m stumped.