Democrats explain how bad Republican initiatives on the economy are.

 

Dems critique of Republican economic proposals. 

Well for one thing, R’s don’t have punishments for oil company price gouging.  Has anyone explained how the oil industry works to D’s? Maybe we should try.  Producers, like farmers, produce a certain amount of petroleum and gas. That plus speculators set the market rates.  If God by the weather provides less raw farm commodities or govt by edict reduces drilling, we have less production.  It’s not the farmer’s fault there’s a food shortage or the oil producer’s fault oil is scarce.  Then the crude is refined by refiners who add about 25 cents per gallon to take raw crude to gasoline and diesel. They have little control over what they buy the crude for.  Gas stations sell gasoline for 0-5 cents profit and make their real money when you buy a Slurpie or coffee, which has 200% to 800% markup.  You want chips with that drink?

            Second D bitch (I’m talking gripe, not Pelosi) is that R’s want to defund the police.  Don’t scratch your head, here’s their logic. The IRS is the tax police and R’s want to limit auditing, therefore R’s want to defund the police.

            Third hair-on-fire proposal of R’s is to deregulate and lower taxes on the middle class, which helps small businesses enormously. Trickle Down Economics! the D's say. Here's an example on how the two sides differ. A Dem proposal before Congress right now is to make all businesses report the carbon footprint of those who use their products.  Thus farmers would have to report on the packing house that they sold the steer to, the processor who cut the steak and the consumer who ate it (stop farting!).  Farmers have almost no way to report such things and it would be an onerous bookkeeping requirement. Really what D’s hate about deregulation is that regulation is how govt controls people’s behavior.  Taxes too. Where oh where did the founding fathers come up with this idea that people should live the kind of life they want to live free of government controls?

            Meanwhile the R’s say that inflation is too much money chasing too few goods.  If the govt circulates 40% more money and things produced hardly change, expect 40% inflation over several years.  D’s counter, “You started it! Trump deficit spent $2T in 2020!"  True.  But that was to keep businesses solvent, people paid for lost wages during a pandemic we’ve not seen for 100 years—a national emergency. It had overwhelming bipartisan support. So having survived and swelled the money supply, it was time to step on the brakes in 2021, rather than add another $4T like Biden did. Put it this way.  I drive fast.  But when a corner comes up, I slow down.  Only a fool speeds up by double.