by Murray Dobbin from Canadian Dimension.
Although the article addresses the issue of tax cuts in Canada, much of the same points the author makes applies to the US as well.
Tax cuts are an attack on the lives of ordinary people--their education, health, and welfare. On the other hand, expenditures for military purposes are rarely cut. He makes the point that tax cuts weaken the infrastructure of the country, except of course near corporations. The latter always demand subsidies from local governments in the form of tax relief and funding for related infrastructure.
But the general deterioration of infrastructure is now less important to the ruling class under neo-liberal policies of "free trade" because of the outsourcing of much of our production to overseas cheap labor markets.
One adverse effect which I didn't see in the article that does apply in the US is that the various levels of governments must, with the reduction in tax revenue, borrow from the banks to keep things running.
Witness the recent decision of the Fed to buy $600 billion of US government bonds. Because of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, the Fed issues money "out of thin air" to buy government bonds, that is, it gives its magical money to the government for bonds on which interest is added. Thus tax payers continue to go deeper and deeper into debt slavery.
