Why people who watch Fox news know less about what's going on than people who pay no attention at all

Congressman Fred Upton (R-MI) is Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.  Al Hunt of Bloomberg TV asks him why the economy did so much better under higher taxes in the 90's than it has in the past decade with lower taxes.

HUNT: Why under those pre-Bush tax cut tax rates did the economy do so well in the ’90s? And why under the Bush tax rates, less for the wealthy, to do so poorly in this decade?

UPTON: Well, a couple things. One, spending went up, Al, the wars. I mean, that’s trillions of dollars. And also there was no change in the entitlements. And we also know —

HUNT: But that shouldn’t hurt the economy. That shouldn’t hurt economic growth.

UPTON: Yeah, but that impacts the debt and the deficit.

HUNT: But I’m asking, why did the economy grow a lot? Why were more jobs created in the previous decade under higher taxes than in this decade under lower taxes?

UPTON: I don’t know specifically the answer to that question.

That's because Upton views the economy ideologically and not realistically.  Fact is:  Tax breaks for plutocrats don't help the economy and they don't create jobs.  Never has, never did, never will.

Economic growth occurs through spending.  When people spend, the economy grows.  When people don't spend, the economy shrinks.

During a recession, corporations and banks limit spending, and people cut back.  The economy shrinks.  If government spends more to make up some of the difference, the economy shrinks less.

Know which country of the world is weathering the worldwide recession the best?  Sweden.  Their safety net acts as emergency government spending, softening the impact of corporate cutbacks.  Plus, that money is actually spent. Plutocrat tax cut money, on the other hand, winds up in some interest-bearing account doing nothing for the over-all economy.

You can have a country where social policy is engineered to make life better for the plutocrats, in which case the rest of us are serfs--"parasites," says Ayn Rand--whose purpose in life is to pamper the "producers."  This is called feudalism.

Or, you can have a country where broad-based prosperity makes life better for everybody.