Announcing www.SnarkySigns.co

A couple new blog posts are in the works. Topics like beating China at the solar energy race and points to consider about student loan debt will be posted in the coming days. For now, though, I am happy to announce my new website - www.snarkysigns.com. It is a gallery of wall photos I create. They are free to copy, post on Facebook, send to friends, whatever. Politically, they may lean left of center, but they all come from the same mix of liberal heart and moderate mind that makes up my perspectives.

For now, there are 3 wall photos at www.snarkysigns.com  Two of them are shown in my previous 2 blog posts.

Here is the newest one, focusing on trickle down economics. Also known as Reaganomics, the idea is that giving big tax breaks to the rich puts more investable money in their pockets, and trusts that they will then create jobs for many people in lower economic classes.

It's a great sounding theory, but it assumes that the rich are most likely to invest that extra money via creating American jobs.

That is a big assumption. It is a big assumption at any point in time, but given the global competition for nearly all job markets, using such money to create American jobs would be a poor economic decision for these rich "job-creators". I'm not saying they never create jobs with much of that tax break. They often do. It's just that they overwhelmingly create FOREIGN jobs with that investable money. Especially now. The return is far greater than hiring an American workforce.

Foreign labor has no outrageous minimum wage  of $7.25 per hour. It also does not require the employer (or the foreign employee) to contribute to Social Security through FICA tax. (Of course, the loss of income to the Social Security fund through both the employer and the American employee's halves is a related, but separate topic.) Add the lack of any health care cost burden in hiring a foreign workforce, and it's pretty obvious that very few "job creators" are going to trickle down that tax break towards creating American jobs. They will invest it where it gets them the greatest return. In our current globally competing workforces, America will usually be the LAST place that money is trickled.

The truth is, the biggest richest sponges at top only soak up more wealth as a result of trickle down economics while the lower class sponges tend to shrivel and shrink. Current international trade and labor laws accelerate the trend, sending jobs overseas and leaving many lower class sponges to simply dry up altogether.

Trickle down economics is a myth. We keep proving it over and over and over again. Yet current Congressional Republicans keep doubling down on that myth. They are so committed to this falsity, that they cannot ever refer to wealthy Americans as anything but "job creators". They repeat this misnomer continually now, despite the lack of jobs they touted in the mid-term elections, and despite the record low taxes we now "enjoy". The Bush tax cuts have been in effect about a decade now. Obama has cut even more taxes. (Over a third of the Recovery Act "stimulus" was tax cuts.) Many huge corporations making record profits have no tax liability, and some even get billions in tax returns due to all these tax cuts. If trickle down worked the way the myth says it does, we would have a near zero unemployment rate now.

Instead, the wealthy continue to get wealthier and the middle class is suffering heavily. Wealth disparity has grown so far out of control, that the inevitable backlash has begun. Despite voicing many concerns, the biggest central driver of the Occupy Wall Street movement is outrageous wealth disparity. We have gone from a society dreaming of being millionaires to commonly talking about our many billionaires. Remember that it takes 1,000 millions to make one billion. America has over 100 people worth at least 3 billion dollars each. That is no small jump.

The already wealthy get wealthier. The middle class stagnates, loses jobs to foreign labor and falls behind. The poor survive as best they can, praying that no cuts come to the crucial safety net programs that mean the difference between a roof overhead and living on the street, or hunger vs. starvation.

Trickle down economics only fuel this massive economic divide. That is the reality of trickle down economics.

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Sometimes I will blog about new photos I create and add to www.snarkysigns.com and sometimes I won't. To keep up to date on my latest, you'll just have to bookmark not only this blog, but www.snarkysigns.com as well.