I knew a man who’d emigrated to America. He observed this: America is a great place if you have a good job. Those words stayed with me.
Conditionally, we are a great country. If you have a good job, you live where you want - a beach house in Connecticut, a cabin in Montana, a farm on the prairie. You have at least two cars, money in the bank, and you are saving well for retirement. You don’t fret much over losing your job because there is always a need for your specialty. You don’t fret about healthcare costs because with a good job you have, and subsequently can afford, insurance. With a good job, you don’t worry about the state of public schools because you send your kids to private and prep schools. Rising gas and grocery prices needn’t worry you because inflation is offset by your gains in the stock market, your annual raise and your bonus. Indeed, when you have checked all these boxes, America is a great place to live.
But what if you have a mediocre job? What if you didn’t inherit a great nest egg to get you off on the right foot or weren’t lucky enough to attend private schools? What if you don’t have the right stuff to acquire a “good” job, or your talent lies in some skill that does not pay handsomely? Like most people, your company is constantly assessing whether you are corporate “fat” that should be trimmed at the hint of the next recession. And if you lose your job, you lose your health insurance and will not like the current ACA premiums. Perhaps your company does not even provide insurance; you worry about a major medical event. To those concerns, overlay the news that the top executives and CEO of your company gave themselves millions or billions in compensation.
If you are a diehard Republican, these things are simply givens. The answer to all things Republican is to work harder and let the market resolve the world. This, in fact, works well for those at the top of the pyramid. The so-called self-made, super-rich contributors to the Idaho, Texas or Utah Republican Party are good examples. Under their influence, America has been molded to suit their desires. Taxes for them are at all-time lows. Business and environmental regulations are falling by the wayside. They are free to purchase as many legislators as they see fit. To back them up, they’ve purchased and honed a strong propaganda machine in the form of right-wing media. To them, it’s your business savvy and your drive that define who should live a good life and who shouldn’t. Winning the gene lottery or growing up in ideal circumstances is not something they care to note on their resume. The strong get ahead while the weak may, in fact, be helped, but only on a voluntary basis; social safety nets are nonstarters. These Republican scions made it on their own, and everyone else should too.
Within my circle of friends and family, less than 10% meet the “good jobs” criteria. There are plenty who make a decent living but almost none that can say they have reached the pearly gates of Republican perfection. Of the other 90%, many of them Republicans, like to believe that if only they work harder, they will get ahead. Most likely, they will not. They will never
outrun the worries stated above. They are one accident, one layoff, one bad decision away from Republican hell.
This is not an argument for socialism; it’s an argument for pragmatism. In my six-plus decades, I’ve seen multiple excuses for cutting taxes on the rich and corporations, but I now believe they have all been carefully crafted to make greed seem more palatable. Trickle-down economics is a blatant lie. That the wealthy create jobs is also a lie. While the rich might have more contacts and sway, there’s no evidence that they initiate more jobs than an entrepreneur of any other class. Then there is the notion that the wealthy pay a much greater dollar volume to the government than anyone else. This is true - and they have a lot more leftover. And the latest excuse: Income distribution is communism in disguise. Funds used to pay our debt or feed our poor have nothing to do with a failed governing philosophy. There will be another excuse soon, I’m sure.
Making things easier for corporations and the wealthy is not an all-encompassing solution. Capitalism cannot resolve everything. If it could, healthcare costs would be shrinking over time because isn’t that what capitalism does? More automation and better efficiency mean fewer people, which means lower costs. But this is not what’s happening. Costs continue to outpace inflation, and they always have. The upper echelons of this industry must really enjoy being in a business that lacks a downturn.
So what should we do? Tax the wealthy more? Hell, yeah. Tax corporations more? Hell, yeah. They will do just fine without all their government handouts. They have swung the pendulum so far and so stealthily that we’ve hardly noticed how much they are grabbing. Our deficit is not the result of welfare or social programs; rather, it is the result of the wealthy and the connected having lowered their tax contributions under Republican leadership. It’s time for a change.