I posted this comment to the following article on Friday, March 12, 2021, which was promptly moderated and deleted, while fact-free comments were allowed to stand. Is this how the Fourth Estate is supposed to serve the public?
So, you commenters below think that the American Rescue Plan (ARP) legislation is a complete waste of money? Maybe you don’t see or understand how badly the American economy has been damaged by the pandemic, and the desirability of bringing it back to its pre-pandemic strength as quickly as possible.
Have you ever heard the saying ‘it takes money to make money’? People who have made a lot of money from their investments certainly know the truth of that. (which points out one of my gripes about the current tax system – it fails to respect PEOPLE making money enough, and shows too much respect to MONEY making money.)
The American economy is a consumer-based economy, meaning that people spending money is what makes the American economy strong. When people are hurting financially, when people have no money to spend, the economy suffers. Why do you think that Estes Park values the inflow of tourist dollars so much?
ARP focuses on putting money in the hands of people and organizations that most need it, who will turn around and spend it to the benefit of our economy – and their personal lives. This is a broad spectrum piece of legislation that attempts to help many of the depressed sectors of our economy that will benefit from continued support, or that received little or no support from prior legislation. It includes extended unemployment benefits, expanded support for families raising children, reduced health insurance premiums on the ACA exchanges, extended support for small businesses and non-profit organizations, safer in-person learning, and of course funding to support the continued war on the pandemic including vaccinations and testing and tracing.
It is clear that much of this legislation will, both directly and indirectly, reduce the financial stress on American families and family-owned small businesses in this time of global crisis. This is very much pro-family legislation, which will ‘promote the general Welfare’, one of the key goals of our Constitution.
Maybe you still want to complain about the cost. Consider the cost to the economy and to families if the economic recovery is delayed, if businesses don’t have the money to re-hire employees, if people don’t have the money to patronize these businesses. ARP may not be perfect, but it is a smart plan and what America needs right now.
This article seems to be a fair summary of the plan:
https://www.akingump.com/en/news-insights/summary-of-american-rescue-plan-act-of-2021.html
I suspect that your apparent ignorance results from ongoing consumption of lying right-wing media. Promoting and acting on lies subverts the function of American democracy. If you haven’t, you should read my essay, ‘Democracy Under Assault’ on DemandIntegrity . org, which the TG declined to publish.
There are valid questions about how this will be paid for. Researching the concentration of wealth in America will show that wealth inequality has steadily increased for the past 40+ years, with the percentage of wealth owned by the top 10% steadily increasing. I see this as a sign that the American labor force has been systematically under compensated for their contribution to the economy. It is time to make restitution. A wealth tax to pay down the deficit, and wages that place every family with a full-time worker well above the poverty line would be a good start.
I know that some you have been in the thrall of right-wing propaganda outlets for so long that you are not likely to respond to fact and reason; and yet, I do my best to see that what I offer is, at its heart, reason applied to fact and real Christian (Love-one-another) values, in the hope that one day you recognize the damage caused by blindly accepting what you have heard from those right-wing people and organizations.
The American workforce, the American economy has more than enough productivity to support a comfortable standard of living for every family. It is the greed of the wealthy and powerful that have been damaging the lives of ‘we the people’ for decades. You won’t hear that on any of the right-wing propaganda outlets.