Random rant against a discredited economic philosophy

[openspace4life]

If it's really discredited, of course, I shouldn't have to do this, right? But I still hear people arguing that nothing has changed, bashing the Obama tax plan with the tired old claim that only by cutting taxes for the rich and megacorporations can we promote innovation and job creation. Arguments against this, in brief:

1. It's the small corporations that do the most innovating, because they're young, have less inertia and less to lose.
   
2. As for government-supported innovation, how about all the technologies derived from military research, NASA, the NIH, etc?
   
3. A huge chunk of taxpayer money already goes to pay private employees of government contractors (I was one at my last job).
   
4. While I do need more support for this, I learned in college that government policy is the main thing preventing the middle class from eroding away due to the basic tendencies of a capitalist system. Further, the middle class has to be reinvented as times change, from agrarianism to industry to services to high-tech and now the emerging green-collar economy.
   
5. Want more money to reinvest in your megacorporation? How's this: instead of cutting your taxes, we put a progressive tax on the ridiculously huge bonuses you corporate big-shots give yourselves all the time*, so you'll have an incentive to get into a lower bracket and spend the savings on building your business.

And another thing: to those of you who still think you're going to sway voters with the claim that Obama's plan would be a "redistribution of wealth," I have two words: Good luck. While the masses aren't talking communist revolution yet (that takes at least a few years of depression), when people can see the utter failure of the deregulation strategy playing out before their eyes, they're not going to turn around and yell "No, I don't want government interfering in the economy!" when the interference in question is shoring up the safety net for almost all of us, partly at the expense of the same rich bastards in the banking and mortgage lending sectors whose mindless greed got us into this mess in the first place. Class warfare? Well, yeah, kind of. It's only to be expected, really, in times like these.

* Note: this statement is a personal opinion, not that of my employer, nor is it intended specifically as a criticism of Microsoft.