If republicans hadn't been so dead set against allowing government to control the practices of lenders, we wouldn't be in this housing crisis. You're already paying for it. Every dollar that falls off the value of your home is payment for the myth of laissez faire utopia. You could save the average taxpayer more money with a lowered threshold for defining usory loans than could ever be done with a tax cut... without depleting the national coffers. But no... that is between the consumer and the lender, right? Maybe we should just remove all regulation? Loan sharking would become legal business practice. Speculative stock purchases could be next. That only almost destroyed America once, and now we have to deal with socialism.
Tax cuts are a myth anyway. Watch local taxes rise whenever federal taxes are lowered. Someone has to pay for public works, or the values of communities go down. Federal subsidies go to communities. When they dry up, communities take their cut directly from the people... or they let the services go to hell, and the values of properties go down on that count as well.
It's an emotional thing. We are told it's our money... we should be allowed to keep it. We feel that sting when we see taxes take a big chunk out of our pay. Naturally, we want the guy who will let us keep the most money. Hell, W. Bush actually promised money from the coffers to pay BACK to the people. Ha! Brilliant. He actually bought votes with money he would only have access to if elected. Three hundred dollars. Six hundred for those of you with kids, right? Then a few dollars here and there in cuts. Of course, it left us in no way prepared for fiscal crisis.
Social programs do not equal socialism. We are so far right of socialism that using the word is insulting. I have lived in a socialist nation. I know the tax structure. Really, most of the nations we called communist were really socialist. What am I doing? It all comes down to "they entered into a contract" and "why should I have to pay?"
You have to pay because we all suffer for the fucking nickel and diming. I'm tired of the right calling every government action (other than the ones that try to legislate us into morality) an attempt at paternalizing government. We have to be pragmatic, and this rugged individualism is fucking us all right in the ass. It's time to pony up and help fix this mess. Ronald Reagan dressed it up as "trickle down theory". That was the biggest crock of bullshit to ever fail math. The world's greatest economic disparities have been casused by similar policies. The powers that be, allowed to have the money to invest in business, to grow the economy, which is supposed to help us all, DO NOT let that shit trickle down anything.
The republican party sells pipe dreams to the financially indignant. Alaskan oil?! That will bring the price of oil down about fifty cents a barrel. What's it at now? $117 and something? They actually get votes on that issue. It's a farce, and they all know it. They are toying with you. If I hear one more person suggest a bunch of hippies crying over caribou are the reason gas prices are so high, I'm going to summon all the tourist boards, hunters and trappers in Canada and Alaska to come pump all the acid rain stemming from oil production right up his or her ass. Those are the ones that will be hurt... and NO ONE will be helped. Well... some big oil stockholders, but they're using $100 dollar bills as cum rags already.
A two-party system would be fine... checks and balances...great... but one of those parties is republican. That has been screwing us for decades. We've let the bullies look out for the kids, and the bullies keep telling us it's the kids' fault for being pussies.