R
rdean
Guest
It's been said that we learn from our mistakes and those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it's mistakes. Well, if you "rewrite" history, you will never learn.
After the debt ceiling deal, the Tea Party and John Boehner were crowing, "I got 98% of what I wanted" and "we won". A few days later, "It's the Democrats fault". Just that quick.
When you look at this final agreement that we came to with the White House, I got 98 percent of what I wanted. Im pretty happy, Boehner said in an interview with CBS News on Monday evening.
Speaker Boehner: I Got 98% of What I Wanted (Video)
We know that a decade of Republicans policies, including:
Trillions in tax cuts with the majority going to the top 3%
Extension of the Bush Tax Cuts
A stimulus package that was 35 to 40% tax cuts (see payroll tax)
The 12 largest companies paying zero in taxes and getting free money to the tune of 2.5 billion dollars
Subsidies for oil companies
Union busting
Slashed budgets at the state level including education
have left us with a "shattered economy". Not the growth Republicans expected. They expected this because their leaders have been selling this ideology for decades.
Continuing along this line, their current plans include replacing Medicare with a voucher program and some insist we should end corporate tax all together. This would only deepen the hole we find ourselves in. Actually, many countries have universal health care and financially, are among the most successful economies with stable AAA ratings.
The truth is, these GOP policies are NOT designed to help the economy. They are designed to "starve the beast", in other words, bring down a government Republican leaders have taught their base to fear and distrust. And that is the crux of the failure of Republican Economic Policy.
There are things that government can do. Look at NASA. Thousands of patents bringing in billions and billions of dollars through licensing and sale. Those patents and innovations developed from government partnering with big business. Same with the Hoover Dam. Same with developing nuclear power plants, and the list goes on.
Right wing politics has vilified government, saying "government can't do anything right" and making sure that's true every time they are voted into office, yet our greatest achievements as a country were collaborations between government and business.
Here is the tragedy: by insisting on a small-government, tax-cut-only solution to produce jobs, we are living by an outdated map of the economic world. Indeed, we may be accelerating the job losses as our competitors take advantage of our passivity. Other countries are aggressively planning, developing economic clusters, partnering and creating jobs in new sectors, only too pleased that the U.S. is stuck in the starting blocks. China, for instance, clearly has every intention of leading the world in job creation in the clean-energy sector, pleased that we are a sleeping giant.
But tax cuts cant be the only tool in Americas economic toolbox. This is a time for carefully crafted incentives that will spur public-private partnerships and create jobs again in America. Laissez faire is not a winning strategy in a global economy where the competitors play a much more muscular game. We need economic and manufacturing policy that puts America on our side, not on the sidelines, in the global race for jobs.
America's Workers Get Stiffed Again
To a great extent, the evolution of high-tech small businesses has been possible in the past 25 years due to programs such as Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR). A positive aspect of these programs is the provision of data rights in new technologies to the developer organizations. This is a manifestation of the BayhDole Act of 1980, which gives U.S. universities, small businesses, and non-profit organizations intellectual property control of inventions and other intellectual property that were developed with federal funds.
The SBIR/STTR programs have enabled the creation of hundreds of thousands of high-tech jobs in small businesses, which compared to large organizations, have minimal bureaucracy and high motivation. These firms are agile, producing and developing innovative research and new technologies. Small businesses are the most productivecompared to large businesses, federal laboratories, and universitiesin converting federal R&D dollars into patents, according to 2007 data published by the National Science Foundation in Science and Engineering Indicators. In addition, some small high-tech businesses have become excellent technology incubators and research contractors.
Leveraging Innovation | R&D Mag
And that is why Republican Economic policies are failures. To be competitive, this country has to partner business and government if we want to compete. That includes investment in education, but that's another thread.
After the debt ceiling deal, the Tea Party and John Boehner were crowing, "I got 98% of what I wanted" and "we won". A few days later, "It's the Democrats fault". Just that quick.
When you look at this final agreement that we came to with the White House, I got 98 percent of what I wanted. Im pretty happy, Boehner said in an interview with CBS News on Monday evening.
Speaker Boehner: I Got 98% of What I Wanted (Video)
We know that a decade of Republicans policies, including:
Trillions in tax cuts with the majority going to the top 3%
Extension of the Bush Tax Cuts
A stimulus package that was 35 to 40% tax cuts (see payroll tax)
The 12 largest companies paying zero in taxes and getting free money to the tune of 2.5 billion dollars
Subsidies for oil companies
Union busting
Slashed budgets at the state level including education
have left us with a "shattered economy". Not the growth Republicans expected. They expected this because their leaders have been selling this ideology for decades.
Continuing along this line, their current plans include replacing Medicare with a voucher program and some insist we should end corporate tax all together. This would only deepen the hole we find ourselves in. Actually, many countries have universal health care and financially, are among the most successful economies with stable AAA ratings.
The truth is, these GOP policies are NOT designed to help the economy. They are designed to "starve the beast", in other words, bring down a government Republican leaders have taught their base to fear and distrust. And that is the crux of the failure of Republican Economic Policy.
There are things that government can do. Look at NASA. Thousands of patents bringing in billions and billions of dollars through licensing and sale. Those patents and innovations developed from government partnering with big business. Same with the Hoover Dam. Same with developing nuclear power plants, and the list goes on.
Right wing politics has vilified government, saying "government can't do anything right" and making sure that's true every time they are voted into office, yet our greatest achievements as a country were collaborations between government and business.
Here is the tragedy: by insisting on a small-government, tax-cut-only solution to produce jobs, we are living by an outdated map of the economic world. Indeed, we may be accelerating the job losses as our competitors take advantage of our passivity. Other countries are aggressively planning, developing economic clusters, partnering and creating jobs in new sectors, only too pleased that the U.S. is stuck in the starting blocks. China, for instance, clearly has every intention of leading the world in job creation in the clean-energy sector, pleased that we are a sleeping giant.
But tax cuts cant be the only tool in Americas economic toolbox. This is a time for carefully crafted incentives that will spur public-private partnerships and create jobs again in America. Laissez faire is not a winning strategy in a global economy where the competitors play a much more muscular game. We need economic and manufacturing policy that puts America on our side, not on the sidelines, in the global race for jobs.
America's Workers Get Stiffed Again
To a great extent, the evolution of high-tech small businesses has been possible in the past 25 years due to programs such as Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR). A positive aspect of these programs is the provision of data rights in new technologies to the developer organizations. This is a manifestation of the BayhDole Act of 1980, which gives U.S. universities, small businesses, and non-profit organizations intellectual property control of inventions and other intellectual property that were developed with federal funds.
The SBIR/STTR programs have enabled the creation of hundreds of thousands of high-tech jobs in small businesses, which compared to large organizations, have minimal bureaucracy and high motivation. These firms are agile, producing and developing innovative research and new technologies. Small businesses are the most productivecompared to large businesses, federal laboratories, and universitiesin converting federal R&D dollars into patents, according to 2007 data published by the National Science Foundation in Science and Engineering Indicators. In addition, some small high-tech businesses have become excellent technology incubators and research contractors.
Leveraging Innovation | R&D Mag
And that is why Republican Economic policies are failures. To be competitive, this country has to partner business and government if we want to compete. That includes investment in education, but that's another thread.
