Myths, deception, and lies: Rhetoric and the conservative right [VIDEO]

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Robert Reich debunks 6 big GOP lies about the economy

UpTakeVideo recently posted a video on YouTube of former Secretary of Labor, professor, and author Robert Reich speaking at the "Summit For A Fair Economy" in Minneapolis, Minnesota on September 10, 2011.  In the video, Reich details 6 big GOP lies about the economy.

The lies as detailed by Reich and the video's description:

1.) Tax cuts to the rich and corporations trickle down to the rest of us.  (No it doesn't, and it never has.)

2.) If you shrink government you create jobs.  (No, you get rid of jobs that way.)

3.) High taxes on the rich hurts the economy.  (No, the economy grew when the US did this under Eisenhower.)

4.) Debt is to be avoided, and it is mostly caused by Medicare.  (No, if debt is properly used to grow the economy, it becomes a smaller part of the budget because of increased revenue, and Medicare has the lowest overhead of any health insurance plan out there.)

5.) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.  (No, it's solid for 26 years. Social Security is solid beyond that if the rich pay the same percentage in social security taxes as the rest of us do.)

6.) We need to tax the poor.  (This is what Republicans have been proposing when they say any "tax reform" needs to involve all Americans, because poor people pay no income tax. The poor have no money, and taxing them will not solve our budget problems.)

More after the break...

These lies are just more of the same oppressive rhetoric employed by cons to cut taxes for the super-rich, which enables the super-rich to pay the puppets we call politicians to write legislation as the corporates seem fit; rinse, wash, repeat.

Conservatives just love to use the lazy American as an example to persuade the public on policy.

Yes. There are people that abuse the system, but statistically, they are the exceptions, not the rule. People generally want to work and feel good about themselves. And the people that abuse the system? Well, they are just spending that money anyway, and that money gets recycled right back into our GDP.

Let's use this same logic -- the logic that there will always be people who abuse the system -- and apply it to the top.

This is an incredibly more dangerous scenario. The people at the top control over forty percent of the nation's economy. This has the potential to be much more devastating than the "loser" receiving his check for a few hundred dollars every month which he spends anyway.

We are talking about millions...billions...TRILLIONS of dollars; the kind of money that has real influence. With the Citizen's United decision -- which enabled legalized money laundering for corporations and people like the Koch brothers to donate unlimited amounts of money to politicians -- the potential got exponentially scarier.

Let me say something that liberals have been saying for over thirty years: Trickle-down economics does not work!

We need to employ a bottom up strategy just like everything else in life and nature that is sturdy and built for a strong time bias.

We need to put the power back into the hands of the people. We need people to start spending money again. If they don't spend money, there will be no demand and thus no jobs and thus a defeated people who are easy to manipulate.

How many jobs do you think there would be if we shifted the wealth parity, i.e. the forty-two percent of the nation's wealth one or two percent control, and put it back into the hands of the people that created that wealth in the first place?

Imagine the spending that would occur. Imagine the catapulting demand and thus explosive need for jobs and thus creating more money to spend and more jobs...

That is how you build a strong county -- not by oppressing its citizens with wage slavery -- but by empowering The People.

Of course, the people controlling legislation with their money do not want to empower the people. They want to remain in power.

Those in power use the aforementioned rhetoric against the worker. The corporates and bourgeoisie will lead you to this warped sense of the average American worker struggling to raise a family while the super rich hoard their money -- money that doesn't get spent back into the economy -- all in the name of maintaining their banana republic.   

We are near or at record production levels which correlates with the near record profits. The American producer is working longer and harder without proper pay and benefits. If you take care of the people, the people will take care of the nation.

It's not a question about them having enough money; it's a question on how they obtained it. And it's not a question about wealth redistribution. It's a question about what works.