Reminder: The first few of these will be older posts previously published by myself on Facebook, LiveJournal, or even cafemom.
Originally posted August 12, 2011 on Facebook.
Many Americans seem to be suffering from a misconception that the Rich make jobs. The Conservative Right, and especially the Tea Party, want to protect the rights of the rich from taxes and regulations that would require them to behave in a fiscally responsible and ethically sound business manner. They block the way for compromise to be made, and to change this, we first have to do away with this misconception.
Originally posted August 12, 2011 on Facebook.
Many Americans seem to be suffering from a misconception that the Rich make jobs. The Conservative Right, and especially the Tea Party, want to protect the rights of the rich from taxes and regulations that would require them to behave in a fiscally responsible and ethically sound business manner. They block the way for compromise to be made, and to change this, we first have to do away with this misconception.
The Rich are not job makers. Oh, they may own the companies that make new jobs, but they do not do it from the goodness of their hearts. Middle class consumers and their spending are the true job makers in America. It’s simple logic really. When Americans have jobs they have money to spend; they demand more products and services, creating a need to be filled and therefore more Jobs, further strengthening the economy. The Rich are a minority, and primarily buy luxury goods, where as the bank teller, school teacher, construction worker and fireman spend their checks at the local grocery store and gas station, helping ensure that the cashiers and stockers and other working class employees have work to do and are able to keep their jobs, receive their pay checks, and go on to spend their money in the local economy. Barring, of course, the occasional foray into buying from China via EBay.
When you have a weak middle class, you have a weak economy, costing jobs and starting a sad perpetual cycle. Helping the Rich does not create jobs or stimulate the economy, it just keeps the Rich wealthy, and makes more people poor. The evidence is clear, the economy had more growth when corporate taxes and taxes on the rich were at their highest in the 1950’s and 60’s, and when the middle and lower classes were taxed less, giving them more buying power. The people who were hurt by the stock market crash on Monday were not the ones holding 90% of our nations wealth. It may have stung, they might only be able to afford one yacht this year, but it was the upper middle class, doctors, lawyers, computer specialists, accountants and administrators (mostly white collar jobs), who lost their investments and savings. Under the current tax system, working and middle class people are divided by an arbitrary (and too low) tax divide that alienates them from their natural white collar allies. The current 250K tax cap was placed in the 70’s, and has not been raised since. Realistically, due to changes in income levels, dollar values, and economic buying power, that limit should be set somewhere over a million dollars. By keeping the working and middle class separated through tax codes from the upper middle class, the unethical among the truly wealthy are able to maintain their own power structure and lifestyle by pitting us against each other and making enemies of those who should be working together.
Unethical business practices on a corporate level started this fiasco, the loaning of money banks knew people could not afford to pay back, making sweetheart deals between corporations and political parties, moving jobs overseas, and caring more about corporate and stock holder profits than their employees. Corporations, especially the unethical, continue to profit from the economic recession while the rest of the country suffers. People now claim, “Oh, but the rich will make jobs.” No they won’t, not unless it will profit them, because they do not care about you and me.
They do not care about jobs, they do not care about the cycle of spending, they only care about their own wealth and power, even if it does come back to bite them in the end. They want to protect the status quo, meaning their own control and supposed superiority, and they want MORE. More power, more control, and bigger share of everything. I don’t say all of the wealthy are like that, but a scary majority are, or they are so cowed by others in their chain of business command that they dare not step out of line. I hate to say anything as inflammatory as “Class Warfare” but that is exactly what we are seeing.
The wealthy have the capital to make risky ventures, they could do it and if a business didn’t improve properly, it really wouldn’t hurt them. But they will not, because they want to keep their power structure. What’s more, instead of hiring people to do a reasonable amount of work for a living wage, they keep demanding more and more from employees for less and less, eroding worker power and rights to fair treatment and pay with the constant threat of unemployment. This sets a dangerous precedent as workers are regulated to the role of replaceable parts if they don’t meet unreal expectations, and see more of their security, and often self worth, decline.
In the end, 90% of Americans only hold about 10% of the wealth, but it is that 10% that buys everyone’s groceries and pays the electric bill. Slowly, that 10% is trickling away, or rather up, as wages in relation to dollar value decline and corporate profits sky rocket. Americans have been reduced to debt peonage and bickering over whose fault it is, divided along political and economic lines, when the real answer is clear. The fault lies in a broken system, and without the involvement of strong working and middle classes and a fiscal and economic revolution of some sort, the only real change any of us will see is the pennies we count out to try to make ends meet.
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