Conservatives keep trying to claim that we can't increase taxes on rich people, because Obama shouldn't tax "job creators."
Can we have a moratorium on the use of the term "job creators" for rich people? Because, at the moment, they are verifiably not creating any fucking jobs. That's like calling somebody a "stamp collector" when they don't buy, sell, or keep any stamps. It's just stupid.
In fact, I'll go one step further. I'll support a tax cut for anybody who creates new jobs, in America, which are held by American citizens. Now, this has to be a net jobs increase - if you fire fifty thousand people, and then hire forty thousand, you don't get congratulated for creating forty thousand jobs - you get yelled at for losing ten thousand.
(Also, any jobs you ship overseas? Yeah, that counts as a job loss.)
And by the way, that whole idea that "lower taxes equal more jobs"? It's stupid. Reagan experienced job growth while he was in office. But only after he raised taxes. Three times.
So, can we have a little honesty up in this bitch? For once?
Nameless,
ReplyDeleteLast night, Rachel Maddow (the only mainstream news person who covers this), reported on the fortunes of the Koch brothers from 2007 through 2010. Her findings: Koch brothers' net worth almost doubled in this period; whereas the number of persons employed by Koch Industries declined from 80,000 to less than 67,000.
Right! No increase in sales, revenues, or net worth created one fucking job. In fact, Sociopathy Enterprises shed 13,000 jobs. The Koch brothers are bloodsuckers, and the GOP functions as their Basiji.
BTW, watch the "B" word stuff. Squid, our other Cephalopod-in-Residence, will holler at you (and the trophy wife will not approve either).
I get soooo tired of being told rich people are going to save our economy and create jobs. If that were so, wouldn't they be doing it? The Bush tax cuts have been in place for how long now so where are all those jobs?
ReplyDeleteInvesting in smart people with great concepts, rewarding businesses that stay in the US and keep their jobs here, lowering the corporate tax, improving the national infrastructure will be what brings jobs. Changing our tax system would also help. It is too burdensome, too full of loopholes, we need a national sales tax or some other similar tax restructuring. It would probably bring in more money, save the government billions in streamlined processing and take the burden off of those who are the most burdened by the current tax system.
Nameless,
ReplyDeleteMakes sense to me.
What creates jobs is DEMAND FOR GOODS AND SERVICES. businesses only hire people when other people want stuff.
Desire (not primarily need, or we would be a subsistence economy) is the engine that drives capitalism. It's fair to say that a brilliant businessperson can lead us to want things and services we didn't even know we wanted. But mainly, desire is for things we already know we want, and businesses do their best to supply our wants and provide us with variations on them.
I know the above is too difficult for the American Right to grasp because it's more complex than the sound of one knuckle dragging, but it's the truth. Yes, truth, with its "well-known liberal bias," as Colbert reminds us, but truth all the same.
The GOP is serving up the soul-crushingly shallow fiction that businesses themselves just wave a magic wand and create jobs out of thin air, and like so many pieces of stupidity, it has a seductive air and millions of lackwits will go to their graves believing it's holy writ.
Finally, the class warfare element in their assault is so obvious that a child should be able to see it: they lump together ALL wealthy people as if all of them were running major corporations and feverishly innovating, producing, etc. What about people who inherited their wealth and measure out their days with coffee spoons and talk of Michelangelo while they come and go (to adapt a few images from T.S. Eliot's "Prufrock")? What about so-called trust babies, and so forth? No, what Republicans mean by "job creators" is the beautiful people, every last one of them, because they're different and better than everyone else.
"a brilliant businessperson can lead us to want things and services we didn't even know we wanted"
ReplyDeleteI think the paradigm example of what you say is Apple Computer, inventor of the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. Once we saw what these devices could do, we wanted them. And Apple Computer has earned an enviable position: It is now the largest American corporate entity (sometimes tied with Exxon for first place) with a cash reserve over $74 billion.
Nevertheless, I should point out that all Apple products are manufactured by Foxconn in China, and the ratio of American to Asian workers making Apple products is roughly 1:10. No amount of innovation will change matters; all manufacturing is held in thrall to the economics of outsourcing.
We are in desperate need of a national economic policy, which won't happen due to GOP obstructionism.
An afterthought to embellish upon this ...
ReplyDelete"We are in desperate need of a national economic policy ..."
... which the GOP, no doubt, considers to be socialism. Obstructionism and the lack of government action in these economic hard times is tantamount to ...
National suicide!
Octo,
ReplyDeleteYes indeed. It's not often enough realized in the USA that "Kapitalismus" is an international system and does not of its own accord respond well (or at all) to the needs of a particular nation. So long as there are people able to make and buy the desired stuff SOMEWHERE, that works for the major wielder of capital -- the people living right outside your factory gates can starve and you could still turn a billion bucks or two. Apparently, too many Americans are so illiterate about econ that they just don't get this.
If you give rich men tax cuts, they are not going to go hire people with the profits. They are going to stick the profits in their mattresses with the rest of their money.
ReplyDeleteThese job creators move more slowly than molasses flowing uphill in the winter time. Wealthy people acquire wealth. If they incidentally create jobs, they're okay with that but their goal is to acquire more wealth. Move your manufacturing company overseas and you don't have all those pesky regulations to protect the environment and the employees, and you can pay all of your workers far less than you would have to in the U.S. North Carolina used to have a thriving textile industry until all the plants pulled out in the early 1990s and took their manufacturing jobs overseas. Everyone connected with that industry lost their jobs. Generations had worked in those textile mills where they earned a living wage and had benefits. There was an entire additional industry connected with the stream of outlet stores along I-40 and I-85. The "job creators" stopped creating jobs a long time ago and I agree, NC, it's about time they stop lying about it.
ReplyDeleteThe T Brains use that North Carolina example to argue against benefits and the minimum wage. They have nothing against keeping jobs in America, it's just that they want to hire disposable serfs with no rights or power -- just like the good old days.
ReplyDeleteRestoring Reagan's top bracket isn't going to disturb entrepreneurship one bit and getting rid of everything from food stamps to FEMA is simply a ploy to generate a larger and more abject class of serfs -- just like the good old days.
Of course "rich" ain't what it used to be and of course rich is relative and so is greed. The urge to feed your family is the same as the urge to buy them a second home in Aspen and a bigger yacht. It's the sense of entitlement that's more obnoxious in the middle and upper classes because there's little in the way of acknowledging that we have what we have because of the country we live in and the country we live in is - or was - relatively free not just because of our military. It's the idea that everything I gain is mine, mine, mine and has nothing to do with anything else that offends me the most. The poor are told they owe everything the rich think they owe nothing and lest someone who doesn't know me, I'm neither jealous nor mischaracterizing rich people. They're no more alike than any other arbitrary group, but then neither are the poor.