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It’s no secret that the Republican party’s economic ideology is based on tax cuts, commonly referred to as “trickle-down economics.” It’s generally the belief that the more the rich have, the better off the rest of us will be via more jobs, higher wages and a stimulated economy. Except, that’s not at all what’s happened. Over the last 30+ years the rich have gotten richer while the rest of us have fallen further and further behind. Then again, that’s what we should have expected. To believe tax cuts would create jobs is ludicrous. Businesses create jobs when demand dictates that they’re needed. No business is going to create jobs it doesn’t need just because their taxes were cut. Hell, most businesses continue to prove that their main goal when it comes to wages is to pay their employees as little as possible.
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I think if you ask most people they’ll tell you their pay increases, benefits and overall perks at their job(s) have gotten worse, not better, over the last three decades. Well, perhaps no other state in the country exemplifies what a scam trickle-down economics is better than Kansas. Back in 2012, Governor Sam Brownback promised that his “new pro-growth tax policy will be like a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy.”
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Since then, the Kansas economy has been an absolute mess. The state has been saddled with a massive deficit, creating a situation so dire that just a few months ago even some Republicans in Kansas were admitting that taxes needed to be raised. You know things are getting bad when Republicans are talking about raising taxes.
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Well, things just keep getting worse as jobs numbers in the state continue to disappoint. According to The Kansas City Star:
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This has been a bad week for Gov. Sam Brownback and others who believe his massive income tax cuts are going to dramatically boost employment in the state. A new report Friday showed that Kansas had lost a whopping 4,300 jobs in July from a month earlier. The unemployment rate climbed for the fourth straight month, up to 4.6 percent, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics..
And look at this disastrous note: The Sunflower State now has 1,700 fewer jobs than it did at the start of 2015. One more fact from the latest report shows that Kansas has added a puny 5,600 total jobs in the last year — from July 2014 to July 2015.
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The new information shows that the tax cuts that have drained the Kansas treasury of hundreds of millions of dollars the past two years are not working to attract employers and jobs. I would like to take this time to remind everyone that while Kansas struggles, we’ve seen historic economic growth and job creation in the last 12-18 months nationally.
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In fact, 2014 was the best year for job creation since the 90's. So, Kansas passes these massive tax cuts, then proceeds to see their deficits skyrocket and job creation weaken. If that scenario sounds familiar, it should – that’s basically what George W. Bush did as well.
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When does this wealth start to trickle down? Even now, Republicans will admit that income inequality is an issue, but their “solution” is more of the same policies that caused it in the first place. The bottom line is, these tax cuts do nothing but make the rich even wealthier at the expense of everyone else. It’s just sad that even with all of these examples showing where tax cuts have been an absolute economic disaster every single time they’re implemented, millions of conservatives still continue to cling to these failed economic policies.
Read more at:
http://www.forwardprogressives.com/republican-tax-cut-disaster-kansas-economy-continues-sink-after-governor-promised-growth/http://www.forwardprogressives.com/republican-tax-cut-disaster-kansas-economy-continues-sink-after-governor-promised-growth/
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