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Kevin McCullough

You write;
“Why they do it makes absolutely no sense - especially to the poor. The data speaks clearly to this matter. When you place uber-taxes on the rich you create higher unemployment, greater poverty, and most importantly for people like me who care about the poor - less money in the treasury to provide the important safety nets for those who truly need them.
When you do the opposite - you get an opposite result. Cutting the top marginal tax rates - particularly on the upper middle, and upper class tax brackets has a stimulus effect. Jobs are created, poverty turns into ownership, and the treasury takes in oodles of dollars.”
I say it isn’t necessarily so. Take a statement from the above excerpt from your discourse: “The data speaks clearly to this matter.” I agree that the data speak clearly on this, but you may be hearing-impaired.
You titled your piece: “Why Liberals Spread Poverty.” I suggest the state of poverty might be described as an inability to consume at a level comparable to that of others who might otherwise be their peers. “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production”: so said Adam Smith. “Production cannot be effected without consumption”: so said the first supply-side economist (J.-B. Say.) Consumption is fifty percent of the game; impoverished people cannot contribute their fair share of consumption.
Mr. McCullough, you misread the data; are you aware there is a scoreboard? It’s in the NIPA’s; go have a look-see. Here is a picture.

http://webpages.charter.net/prologue/images/Poverty_Who.gif

The non-personal consumption includes the consumption of the fixed capital of the nation’s business community, that of all non-profits, and that of all public (governments) entities. It includes all expenditures for the maintenance of all public and private infrastructure. It also includes all expenditures for national defense and public safety.

We might note that the Cons look a little better when leaving out the Hoover years; but, then again, the Cons own Hoover – lock, stock and barrel. And the Libs look a little awesome when leaving out FDR; but then FDR showed the world how to fight and win a war, something that seems to have been lost recently.

Here is a little summary table on prosperity and poverty.

Growth -- Personal Consumption Growth – Non-Personal Consumption
Cons Libs Cons Libs
Complete NIPA era (1929+) 1.4% 2.8% -1.0% 7.7%
Postwar (1948+) 2.1% 2.5% 1.0% 4.3%

If you don’t understand why the liberal reward of labor favors prosperity, you should re-read Adam Smith. Thirteen years before the French laboring class stormed the Bastille, Adam Smith wrote in his “Wealth of Nations”: “The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the labouring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they are going backwards.” (Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chap. VIII, pp 73-74.)

When conservatives go a decade before allowing a meager increase in the lowest wages, they are well into the “scanty maintenance” mode.

Conservatives suck; liberals lead the way.