Submitted by David DiBello, Jan 24, 2008 06:18

David DiBello "The Economy's the Thing." It finally hit home that the most consistent buyers in the U.S. economy are the middle class, a fact seemingly out of touch with the current administration, along with a host of Wall Street prognosticators whose livelihood depends on a robust Dow Jones, a measure of business GDP, devoid of individual growth and sustenance. When asked in an early 2007 press conference what his opinions were of the economy, President Bush responded, "I don't know, you need to ask an economist." I'll assume there is an Economist on staff, but Bush went on to say "I got a B in Econ 101, but I get A's now in Tax cuts," a befuddling statement since tax cutting is a portion of economic structure. Like President Reagan, Bush has managed to take a surplus budget and balloon it into a 10 trillion dollar deficit through massive tax cuts, further irritating because it was done during wartime, which underscores that certain factions of society not only do not serve in the military, they also don't bare any financial sacrifice. Quite the opposite! As with the Reagan years, a small fraction of the US economy, around 5%, are receiving 95% of the economic benefits. Our jobs are being outsourced to foreign countries as Big Business takes advantage of the $1 an hour labor, and U.S. wages have been suppressed through this global competition as the middle class standard of living is further dumbed down, surviving via credit witnessed by our negative .5% savings rate. Unlike the Reagan years the middle class is getting no "trickle down," the extortion theory of keeping the peasants calm. Yet like those years, which ended in the Black Monday of October 1987, the next administration will inherit a Rubik's cube scenario of fixing the economy and healing the deficit. It will be like placing a boxer in a ring with both arms in casts. The wealthy don't care about the National Checking account overdraft since they are removed from its need, effects, and remedies. They are so far up life's totem pole they no longer need government services other than to let the proletariat fight to protect their interests, and they have enough tax loopholes in place so they pay far less than they should, regardless of the propaganda of their "raw contributions." With such a negative appraisal of the Economy that George Bush admittedly doesn't understand except for the tax cutting portion, how did we survive to date, and even fluster if only for the business environment (nobody pays tuition and health cost with the U.S. GDP)? Since we no longer manufacture in this country having shifted jobs to foreign lands, how about an 11 trillion dollar real estate economy, something that increased not in raw production value, but in a false perception of the ability to afford new homes and existing inventories thanks to a no holds barred loan shark mentality of lending money. This strategy, which still hasn't seen the surface, will now lead to a prolonged recession until the next fraudulent economy is created to camouflage the effects of more tax cuts. There is only one thing that the bourgeois did not count on when applying the "cut your nose to spite your face" economic mentality. What if the middle class can no longer spend? This is the result of the Economic Stimulus play, which is catching the conscience and attention of the President, and those who consistently declare the economy to be doing great, pointing to paintings of the sun while redirecting focus from workers inability to pay for increased health coverage, tuition costs and contributory pension plans, along with rising oil prices. The Global Economy will now experience blowback, since all those laborers created by NAFTA, all those jobs in third world countries, employ workers who could never afford American goods on their $1 an hour pay. In desiring a tax rebate (return of your tax dollars) for all those workers under $125,000 a year, President Bush has finally admitted he has to put money in the hands of the middle class, the people who spend money the fastest, and who in volume dictate the health of the economy. These were the people ignored in the Bush Tax cuts, and the stimulus package has now revealed the failings in the President's economic vision; the B student from Yale. We now have to wait for the balance of the sub-primes to play out to their shock date, but the fear is we will have no other economic "scheme," no junk bonds, no dot-coms, to assuage the Republicans next ponzy round of tax cut requests. The electorate's hope is that the next administration will not forgo the middle class again.

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