Response to a comment: Trickle-Down Piss

posted by Ilyse Kazar

A good buddy on Facebook commented on my post about today's VA and NJ governor races:

I wonder if it really Obama - that has people voting R - versus just how bad the economy is. Think we may not be finished with bad economic news (commercial real estate) And Americans want instant fixes - without them paying for it

I think people realized full well how bad the economy already was, and sensed how bad it might get, when they voted in November '08. I think people were hot to see some very tangible things done that directly benefited them. I think people were absolutely ready, in fact, would have cheered from the sidelines, to see the robber barons go down hard.

I also think people understood that fixing Dubya's mess was gonna cost and would not be a free lunch.

When we were on the purported precipice of complete economic meltdown, the people would  have been sobered by the need to pump a trillion dollars of funny money into the system, that will cost us so much as we move forward. But if the money had gone as deferred loans directly to keep real people in their homes, thereby ...

• saving whole neighborhoods from the sad loss in property values and crime and desolation that has resulted from foreclosures
• staving off the costs that we have yet to even calculate in feeding free lunches and offering other services to homeless children and families
• helped folks keep their jobs or find new ones quicker (it's nigh impossible to keep a job or walk into an interview like a positive fresh-faced prospective employee, when one is hungry and homeless)
• kept mortgage payments (preferably re-financed ones) coming into the banks that were crying they were collapsing because of mortgage defaults
• providing a way for the government to at least partially recoup our money when those homeowners get on their feet 

...  then folks could say, well, we can see the real benefits of this costly bailout in front of our eyes. They would have been sobered but not angered at so much money going down a stinking sink-hole while nothing changes in their towns and cities, nothing improves for their families.

Ditto if the money had been put directly into financing small businesses, to create or save jobs and help re-stimulate the Main Street economies.

I haven't noticed any revival of Main Street. I haven't seen the reversal of Reagan's trickle-down theories that have held sway in this country, to a huge extent, ever since 1980. The only thing I've seen is more piss trickling down on the little guy.