On jobs and spending.
88% of income growth since 2009 went to corporate profits, 1% went to employee wages.
To anyone who thinks that further tax breaks/benefits to large corporations would create jobs, let's put it this way: for every extra million dollars that corporate America gets, they pocket $880,000 and put $10,000 into salaries. $10,000. That's not even enough to add one full-time worker at minimum wage.
We want to pick on government spending as being an inefficient way of creating jobs? Giving a corporation a million dollars in taxpayer money so they can hire one minimum wage worker to work 26 hours a week doesn't sound very efficient to me.
Of course, if lowering taxes created jobs then we'd have record low unemployment right now to match our current low taxes, wouldn't we? But we don't, for the same reasons that so little of any money is being invested back into the working class. It doesn't directly benefit the people steering the ship to keep the crew fed or happy if they can figure out another way to keep the crew in line and the ship moving forward.
Supposedly enlightened self interest and the invisible hand of the free market are going to take care of this, but enlightened self-interest requires one to take a long view towards the point where the ship sinks from all the skimping you've done on essential maintenance or is destroyed in a mutiny. And the free market is a power vacuum like any other... it ceases to be free as soon as any one actor upon its stage is able to exert any more leverage or power than any other. There will always be regulations, it's just a question of how they're created and enforced.
There's always going to be some waste in government spending as there's waste in any human endeavor of an appreciable size, but when we cut spending, we're cutting jobs. We're firing public employees, we're canceling contracts with and purchases from private sector employers that require bodies in seats and boots on the ground. As a nation we've always been more comfortable with the notion of putting people to work than the (largely chimerical) idea of "government handouts", but when we hand corporations money in the form of tax cuts, rebates, and grants they have no particular incentive to do anything with that money but pocket it.
When the government spends money on their goods and services, they have to work for it... they have to produce something. And that means hiring people and paying them wages with the money.
Now is not the time for austerity measures. Now is not the time for further choking the lifeblood of the country. It's easy to think "if we're in debt, spending is bad." Believe me, it's a lesson I've had to learn in my day-to-day life. But I'm not the government of a large republic. I'm a private citizen. My personal economy isn't this big whole complex thing that has to keep moving to support millions of people, it's just a tiny little part of that system. Trying to run the government like I'd run my personal accounts makes as much sense as treating a corporation as a person. (Oh, wait.)
Basically, now is the time for patriotic citizens of the United States to stand up and say to our elected representatives, "Put our money to work. Put our people to work."
This entry automatically cross-posted from http://alexandraerin.dreamwidth.org/303922.html. Comment hither or thither. Void where yon.
To anyone who thinks that further tax breaks/benefits to large corporations would create jobs, let's put it this way: for every extra million dollars that corporate America gets, they pocket $880,000 and put $10,000 into salaries. $10,000. That's not even enough to add one full-time worker at minimum wage.
We want to pick on government spending as being an inefficient way of creating jobs? Giving a corporation a million dollars in taxpayer money so they can hire one minimum wage worker to work 26 hours a week doesn't sound very efficient to me.
Of course, if lowering taxes created jobs then we'd have record low unemployment right now to match our current low taxes, wouldn't we? But we don't, for the same reasons that so little of any money is being invested back into the working class. It doesn't directly benefit the people steering the ship to keep the crew fed or happy if they can figure out another way to keep the crew in line and the ship moving forward.
Supposedly enlightened self interest and the invisible hand of the free market are going to take care of this, but enlightened self-interest requires one to take a long view towards the point where the ship sinks from all the skimping you've done on essential maintenance or is destroyed in a mutiny. And the free market is a power vacuum like any other... it ceases to be free as soon as any one actor upon its stage is able to exert any more leverage or power than any other. There will always be regulations, it's just a question of how they're created and enforced.
There's always going to be some waste in government spending as there's waste in any human endeavor of an appreciable size, but when we cut spending, we're cutting jobs. We're firing public employees, we're canceling contracts with and purchases from private sector employers that require bodies in seats and boots on the ground. As a nation we've always been more comfortable with the notion of putting people to work than the (largely chimerical) idea of "government handouts", but when we hand corporations money in the form of tax cuts, rebates, and grants they have no particular incentive to do anything with that money but pocket it.
When the government spends money on their goods and services, they have to work for it... they have to produce something. And that means hiring people and paying them wages with the money.
Now is not the time for austerity measures. Now is not the time for further choking the lifeblood of the country. It's easy to think "if we're in debt, spending is bad." Believe me, it's a lesson I've had to learn in my day-to-day life. But I'm not the government of a large republic. I'm a private citizen. My personal economy isn't this big whole complex thing that has to keep moving to support millions of people, it's just a tiny little part of that system. Trying to run the government like I'd run my personal accounts makes as much sense as treating a corporation as a person. (Oh, wait.)
Basically, now is the time for patriotic citizens of the United States to stand up and say to our elected representatives, "Put our money to work. Put our people to work."
This entry automatically cross-posted from http://alexandraerin.dreamwidth.org/303922.html. Comment hither or thither. Void where yon.