Quote:
Originally Posted by zimmy
You aren't as confused as you appear. Small business is critical. The effective impact of the bill is that it does very little to help small business. The GOP for decades has stood with policies that favor big business over small business. The middle class is shrinking, but mostly because of downward mobility. Not what middle class means by definition, but what the standard of living for the middle class is today compared to what it used to be. This tax bill will likely continue the trend or increase it with the slimmest to no chance that it reverses it.
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The problem, to me, of government actively "helping" small business is that its help always comes with strings. Strings which always gives government some power it didn't have before it tied itself with those strings to whomever it helps. The attachment becomes symbiotic. Whoever or whatever is "helped" forever is attached by those strings, and is dependent on that attachment, to the government. The notion that government helps business by getting out of its way is a non-starter for those who believe in government help. Their claim is that without government protection, there would be cheating, bribery, coercion, or simply the crushing of the little by the big with its greater monetary power.
Fine. I'm all for government fulfilling its duty within the social compact that the people agreed to. That compact requires a free market, freedom being the uncoerced exchange of property, speech, or ideas. Actual cheating, bribery, dishonesty, are all coercive tactics which the people would not object to the government prosecuting as a crime. We would actually demand it. The kind of government help which aids free exchange is not direct financial assistance or tax or regulatory favors, but the protection of freedom in the market.
And I hear, over and over, bald statements like the GOP or the Democrats have forever produced policies that favor this or that. But too often, when details are researched, the statements turn out to simply be political talking points. And they filter down to the public and are repeated as the truth. In another thread, for instance, it was claimed that Steve Bannon is a racist, misogynist, anti-Semite, etc. Researching that characterization, I did not find actual evidence of that claim, just innuendos emanating from some associations, or article titles, or a claim by a bitter ex-wife, none of which are corroborated by his actual personal or business or political relationships, which include Jews many of whom dispute any notion of anti-Semitism. Leftist journals like Salon just make up caricatures based on the flimsiest "evidence," and state them as true. And so the leftist fans believe it and it gets backed up by more mainstream outlets who repeat what's in the lesser journals.
So I am not persuaded by uncorroborated statements. Nor by those whose corroboration is either suspect, biased, or inconsistent. I don't admit to being a thorough researcher at all. But from the more than casual reading I have done on policies reputed to favor the rich at the expense of the poor or middle class, those policies were found to be so only by some inconsistent or not truly provable way. I have found, to my satisfaction by the evidence presented, that after Coolidge helped institute such policies, as well as after Jack Kennedy, Ron Reagan, and George W. Bush also did so, the market did greatly expand and grew jobs and higher incomes. I have read unconvincing rebuttals to those claims. But, whatever the facts, market expansion occurred in every one of those instances. Coolidge, unlike any other President after him, actually lowered the national debt.
As for the standard of living today for the "middle class" compared to what it used to be, I personally prefer the quality of living over the standard of living. They might be one and the same. Except, to me, standard of living is more about the number of things owned. Quality of living is more about satisfaction with the things owned and the durability of those things and of relationships and of the culture we live in.
I prefer that the government stay out of the way of either the standard or quality of living except insofar as it protects our freedom to pursue either one or combination of the two. That means, for me, that government doesn't define what those things are, nor tries to direct for whom those things apply.
We could get into a large discussion about how government protects or distorts our pursuit of preferred lives, but I am accused of rambling on too much, as I am beginning to do here, so the oversimplification will have to, hopefully, suffice.