GBS—What Obama Should Have Done in the Face of Congressional Budget Opposition

…the existing system is in essense nothing but a gigantic robbery of the poor. what is the matter with society is that the legal owners of the country and its capital are getting for nothing whatsoever an enormous share of the wealth produced from day to day in this country… balancing the Budget or forming a Budget was simply this: how much money can we get out of the people?

G B Shaw, In Praise of Guy Fawkes, 1932

Of course, when all the measures directed at the poor are insufficient, a capitalist President and Congress have to consider taxation of the rich, who will never consent until the politicians have convinced them that every last dime has been screwed from the people. Today, they are even greedier and more unreasonable than they were in the 1930s, and we know how they ended!

If Obama were a socialist, having no socialist majority in Congress, according to Shaw, he ought to have resigned in the face of the idiotic Congressional Republican opposition. He should have said:

Very well, I resign, so you Republicans take this budget in hand yourselves. I know perfectly well that you will do everything you can to get the money without coming down on the rich. You will cut services and amenities, and tax every dime of earned wages and nothing or as little as possible on unearned incomes. You will pretend that the US of America will be communistic if a dime of the vast wealth of the rich is conscripted on behalf of the country, and will continue in the face of the dire situation to leave the rich all their tax breaks and bacon lard.

You will not mention what sum of money those tax breaks mean to the treasury, and therefore to the people, nor what the treasury could raise if the rich were obliged to pay tax even at the same rate as the poor, let alone the higher rates that are justified. The poor will spend their money here in the US, creating jobs for others, and demanding goods and services boosting our economy. The rich spend and invest much of their money abroad, depriving the US of jobs, goods and services, and breaking communities in the process.

Very well, serve the rich according to your traditions, and take the plaudits of success or the consequences of failure. I am not in on this deal. My conscience is clear.