One of the major shibboleths in the contemporary Republican / Right Wing theology is the myth of the Job Creator. He is, we're told, all wonderful, all powerful, yet at the same time easily offended. He may decline to do his appointed and unique task of creating jobs for the rest of us mere mortals to toil away in, unless he is constantly placated, fed, coddloed, given special breaks and incentives to do his work. He is easily offended by anything that might bother his delicate sensiobility, and thus dissuaded from his labors. We must giive him anything he desires lest he not create jobs. In short, he holds power of life, death, and regular pay (however meagre) over our society, and we must bow to his wishes or starve.
(I'll ignore the offensive feudalistic implications of this paradigm here - whole diaries could be written on that, and the mindset it represents, alone - and focus on the economic aspects.)
This myth is the ultimate distillation of the trickle-down economic theory that has gripped the country since the days of Ronald Reagan and Arthur Laffer. Give the wealthy, and the wealthy corporations, more income (and power - the two are of course inextricably linked), and they will act to create jobs and wealth that will inevitably trickle down to the average Joe, making his life happier. That belief is such entrenched dogma in current Republican circles that even the least faltering in shouting it to the skies at every possible opportunity makes one essentially unelectable (in a Republican primary, at least).
It's also exactly what I initially termed it - a myth, unsupported by any economic theory or (far more importantly) any historical experience. The history of the United States since 1980 is the long dreary enacting of the failure of trickle down theory when put into practice. Yet the concept retains currency, and partially because it's easily precis'ed. It's snappy, memorable, and graphic. Progressive economics (that is to say, almost all rational economic theory and history), are by contrast muddled and hard to explain or grasp. The Right relies on that conplexity to reduce progressive economics to a caricature of pointy headed professors and bureaucrats diddling around with other people's money without a care for the plight of the average American, interested only in their own aggrandizement.
We need to do better. And here I'll modestly propose an alternative vision.
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