In my piece on the 2004 Fires (perhaps that should read 2003 fires, although I posted the piece in November of 2004) I tried to draw attention to the fact that San Diego has one of the most under funded fire departments in California, and perhaps in the entire nation. This is because of tax cuts followed by cuts in the fire department. According to a piece that appeared in the Los Angeles Times, “Developers own most of the city councils… They’re able to control zoning processes, and they’re frequently behind initiatives that say no new taxes, no new fire services. It’s insanity.” It is worth noting here that the American media regulations are once again being loosened so that now one large corporation can own the newspapers and television stations in one city, and so it would seem that in the future it will become less likely that people will be able to read critical commentary like this as the media becomes even more concentrated and people will have to learn to rely more upon blogs and the internet than they do right now if they want to find out about these sorts of facts.
We know that the tax cuts at the Federal level amount to trillions of dollars, most of the money going to the richest Americans, and this does not include the tax cuts taking place at the state and municipal level which probably amount to trillions more. As well the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are approaching one trillion in total costs with costs forecast to rise to over two trillion dollars. So all told we can see that there are trillions and trillions of dollars available to Americans for various projects but at the same time we see kiddy health care getting vetoed and Americans trying to fight off privatization of their local water company or the sell off of the highway system and freeways to private corporations who will then charge people tolls to drive their cars to work, and so on and so on. And of course Americans are frequently drowning in floods or getting their houses burned down in fires because services have suffered big budget cuts. Earlier this year the money allotted to clearing brush in California before the fall fire season started was slashed.
Now there might those who think that I am advising Americans to raise taxes and reverse all those trillions of dollars they have lost in tax cuts. However we must remember that Americans are part of the highly competitive dog eat dog Capitalist economic system, and for that reason it would be better for Americans to cut taxes some more and just gut all their services. They should also continue the trend, seen at places like the auto industry of getting rid of their pension plans and their health care, and Americans should also get rid of Medicare programs and should also ditch Social Security, since all these programs represent an extra cost. We must keep in mind that Americans must compete with the absolutely worst country on earth, and that means a constant race to the bottom, or the whole country will not be able to sing that song, ‘to market to market to buy a fat pig, home again, home again, jiggity jig.’
Whenever a liberal Democrat suggests raising taxes for new programs you should ignore them. Once they get into office they will renege on that promise. Keep in mind that many of these program cuts were not started by George Bush but rather by the Democrats. You see, you have to be very, very competitive, and all that horseshit about ‘cooperation’ does not apply, because the truth is that being cooperative or helpful will just be the ruin of everyone. Of course, being competitive will also ruin everyone, but at least American’s will still have jobs, even if they are for nine dollars an hour, which might still be to much to be very competitive these days.
The British government has the right idea. They have created a tax haven for really rich capitalists, so that now London has more multi-billionaires living in that city than any other place on earth. If some reckless liberal proposed raising taxes instead of carrying on with the right wing project of gutting every program and dumping all regulations on the environment or media ownership and so on, then you must ask that liberal just how they plan to tax a rich capitalist when that capitalist has bailed out of the country and is now living in the tax haven known as London.
Remember, average American, you must be highly competitive now that your capitalists are taking off for places like China or London and laying you people off and dumping your job overboard, because you are an American, and your higher standard of living is just to damned expensive for you to expect it to be supported by those rich capitalists any more. With technological progress and globalization of production now in full swing that capitalist is now free to dump you overboard at a moment’s notice, and therefore you must be a well behaved American, listen to your union officials, and start tightening that belt. Remember, you want to look very competitive so that you can attract a capitalist to come back to your country, and that means low wages, no pensions, no health care, small fire departments, and certainly no taxes, because if there is one thing a capitalist hates it is taxes. This explains why your politicians, be they Democrats of Republicans, have been wisely rubber stamping all those tax cuts and program gutting, with more sure to come. It is the most sensible strategy for any highly competitive capitalist country so that you Americans can win the dog fight in that dog eat dog economic system.
To summarize then, you cannot have your cake and eat it, too. You cannot have capitalism and have taxes, social programs, pensions, or health care, and in the modern world you cannot have good wages, because it is just to damned uncompetitive with places like China. Capitalism is an undemocratic economic system based upon giving control of the economy to small squads of very rich artificially created alpha males. It is based upon the ‘boss principal’ and as people know when they report to work, it is a fascist economic system without so much as a trace of democracy. No one ever asks people to vote on whether or not they should get sacked and have their job shipped to China. You cannot have Democracy and Fascism both at the same time.
I thought I would make these points clear for I do not want someone to think that I was a liberal of some sort who was suggesting that somehow the solution to all American problems was to raise taxes.
