this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2025
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The article is very well written, IMO, and i encourage people to read it.

First, let’s get back to basics. There are only two primary ways to grow a nation’s wealth: by extracting resources from the earth or by manufacturing goods, adding value to those resources. Everything else — lawns getting mowed, nails getting done, stocks getting traded — may move money around or improve quality of life, but don’t grow the actual wealth of a nation.

I agree and i call that "actual wealth of the nation" the real economy, while painting nails and mowing lawns is entertainment.

The Democratic Party has largely understood this since the industrial revolution, as did the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, who oversaw construction of the transcontinental railroad and funded over 70 free “Land Grant” colleges like MSU across the nation.

From FDR through Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden, Democratic presidents have consistently invested in the physical and human infrastructure that powers wealth creation. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the GI Bill, the WPA and CCC, the Clean Air and Water Acts, and most recently, the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act all fit this pattern.

Even Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, got it, although he was his party’s modern exception. He built the Interstate Highway System and warned Americans against the possibility that the military-industrial complex could corrupt Congress. His vision was of a balanced, productive America, not one dominated by war profiteers and Wall Street gamblers.

But the Republican Party since the 1920s (with the exception of Eisenhower) has marched in the opposite direction. [...]

In a healthy economy, windfalls get invested in productivity: roads, R&D, education, healthcare for working people. In today’s GOP-run economy, however, they’re getting funneled into yachts, stock buybacks, and political influence. Economists call this the “voracity effect”; a dynamic where powerful groups extract so much from the economy that they ultimately destabilize and then crash it. It’s economic cancer.

Exactly what i say. The rich skim so much wealth from the economy that it simply starves to death. A wealth tax would be a systemic counter-measure to that development, and it's bitterly needed.