The age of betrayal is back - By E.J. Dionne Jr.

[DonViejo]

By E.J. Dionne Jr. Opinion writer December 20 at 7:27 PM

Dec. 20, 2017, will live on as a day of disgrace and dishonor. It will be remembered as the day when a government of, by and for the people became a government of, by and for wealthy campaign donors — and of, by and for wealthy Republican politicians themselves.

We thought the corruption, self-dealing and social indifference of the Gilded Age were long behind us. But we underestimated the raw nerve of President Trump, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

This Triumvirate of Privilege has returned us to the “age of betrayal,” as writer Jack Beatty called the years of the robber barons. The goal has always been to roll back the social advances that the country has made since the Progressive Era. On Wednesday, the demolition crews in the House and Senate struck a devastating blow.

The tax law loots the federal treasury on behalf of major corporations and the richest people in America. It sharply shifts the nation’s tax burden onto wage and salary earners whom Trump, Ryan and McConnell treat as serfs expected to bow before the wielders of capital, including real estate titans such as the president himself. It also creates an utterly unstable tax code. So many new opportunities for evasion were stuffed into this monstrosity that not a single person who voted for it can fully know what its effects will be.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-age-of-betrayal-is-back/2017/12/20/0a9e6852-e5c3-11e7-ab50-621fe0588340_story.html

[Girard442]

1. The scariest part is they made almost no effort to hide the robbery.

What's their plan for midterms 2018? Whatever it is, it's bad.

[lunatica]

3. Why should they make an effort to hide it now?

They're in control.

And most of those who have to be re-elected must not care. I think it's probably because they never wanted to govern. They only wanted to get wealthier. It doesn't matter if someone else is elected in their place. What better way to get obscenely rich than to pretend to go to work for the people but to really only work for yourself? We pay their salary and they ruined our lives. Now we'll be able to pay their way and they won't have to pretend to work for us anymore.

[dalton99a]

2. Kick

[smirkymonkey]

4. K&R

I still can't believe this is happening. We are so screwed.

[mulp]

5. Free lunch economics has eaten even progressive brains...

As a boomer in my now eighth decade (by a month), I marvel at the success of free lunch economics in overtaking all political-economy dogma.

Reason has been discarded. Logic is discarded.

EJ thinks this is long run good for corporations. The robber baron eras did not end well.

Perhaps EJ knows it won't end well, but he can't explain why because his brain has been eaten by free lunch economics.

The core of free lunch economics is cutting costs makes you richer.

Cut your food costs and you will be richer.
Cut taxes, the cost of civilization, and you will be richer.
Cut regulations related to pollution, work safety, product safety, ie, cut costs, and you will be richer.

After all, you are never a cost.

As a consumer, you are never a worker in the food chain, worker and consumer safety, health care, etc jobs, so paying less makes you richer because workers are a cost to be eliminated.

Further as a consumer, paying taxes and fees costs too much and should be eliminated because God made the roads and bridges...

Or else, the free market created the cars and roads, and the free in free market means free stuff, like all the free Google stuff, free search, free browser, free mail, so obviously Google will deliver free food, free housing, free transportation, if the government just gets out of the way.

Everything Trump has advocated is job killing.

Unless the 13th amendment is repealed and jobs are created by putting people in chains and making them work with whips for free, no cost.

Even Bernie advocates free lunch economics. He wants to cut health care costs, which requires killing probably a few million jobs.

Health care costs are high as a share of GDP because things like food are too cheap. Increase the price of food, clothing, child care, so those workers are no longer on welfare, and health care as a share of GDP will shrink even by increasing in dollar costs. And GDP will also be much higher.

Your income is my cost. Your cost is my income. Free lunch economics promises cost cutting will make you richer, as if lower income is richer.

The only way the GOP economic policies don't lead to depression is by massive debt by government, by businesses, by individuals, in which all promise to work to pay off debt in the future without buying anything.

And when no one engages in costly buying of things, no one will be paid to work producing things no one buys.

Workers will not pay the price if not working. They will instead merely increase the burden by failing to buy stuff, failing to have "wealth" to be taken, failing to pay debt and getting the Constitutional wealth redistribution bailout (bankruptcy, Trump's favorite bailout).

You have no costs if you have no income, in free lunch economics - if you can't pay for something, it costs you nothing.