After seeing the infamous "Jobs on a whiteboard" Linda McMahon commercial for the zillionth time today on my television, I decided to take a much deeper read and analysis of Linda's "Jobs Plan"which she so confidently boasts will somehow, if implemented, result in a great re-awakening of the US economy and a resurgence of well-paying jobs for all.
As a lifelong Connecticut resident, I've witnessed the rise of Linda's World Wrestling Entertainment, and I do respect her contribution to the local economy and the jobs she has in fact created here.
I still can't help, however, to wonder how Linda McMahon would propose that we solve the current employment crisis? I don't think there are eight million new jobs we can create in the pro wrestling industry...so I decided to study Linda's plan, and in the process, I realized that the answers to our employment problems DO exist...as the polar opposites of Linda's plan!
To spare you from having to go through the very well-produced, fancy, glossy brochure that is Linda's jobs plan, let me highlight the four main points, as I understood them from reading:
- Don't let the Bush Tax Cuts expire, and heck, go even further with cuts to corporate taxes, dividend taxes.
- Regulations that inhibit "growth" (there is no distinction or examples of regulations that "don't" inhibit growth, so we have no idea if there are ANY regulations Linda would deem acceptable to business) should be eliminated. Also, more nuclear power, offshore drilling, domestic energy exploration, and ANWAR exploration. I do appreciate that Linda has paid some lip service on being more careful about that wacky offshore drilling stuff, but you know, I can't help but think this really isn't one of the first places I want to go to produce some jobs. I've got to think there are other strategies we can try first in the jobs-expansion quest before we resort to the ones that tend to DESTROY THE GULF OF MEXICO. Just my humble opinion.
- Restore sound government finances (which is a great idea - if we actually looked at the REAL waste and fraud in our national budget (military industrial complex corruption, which DWARFS what we spend on social services), and held those who have prospered to the point of owning the vast majority of all wealth in the United States for their fair share of the government's budget in the form of closed tax loopholes, breaks, and rates reset to Reagan levels, not gimmicks like calling for a balanced budget amendment, accounting gimmicks reporting social security disbursements in the budget, and reclaiming TARP funds to pay the debt (which would only be a tiny drop in the bucket, and unnecessary if progressive taxation was implemented.)
- Restore sound money - which actually, IS a truly good idea - but I wonder if Linda would go far ENOUGH towards this particular cause. (Would Linda REALLY have the nerve to call for an end to the Federal Reserve? Or a REAL and HONEST full opening of its books? I'm not too sure about that.)
So having said that, here is MY four-point plan for promoting job growth in the United States:
- Implement a fair, progressive tax rate structure to Reagan levels. Ronald Reagan upon taking office inherited a tax system wherein the top income tax rate was SEVENTY percent. In 1981 Reagan lowered the top rate to 50% and this tax rate for the richest in America did not cause the sky to fall, or the world to end. It's time to adjust the income tax structure so that income over 1 million dollars per year is taxed at 50 percent. Capital gains should be taxed the same. The claim that taxing the rich kills jobs and sends them overseas is absolutely false and easily debunked. The rich have had the LOWEST tax rates on earned and unearned income during the last few decades then at ANY time in history. Claiming that taxes on the rich correspond to job creation do not WASH with the historical record. The vast, vast wealth transferred to the top two percent via these tax conditions has been either a) hoarded in non-job creating financial instruments, or b) spent on business expansion - OFF OUR SHORES, expanding the use of slave-wage third world labor. If the strawman low taxes = US jobs were true, we would have virtually zero unemployment right now. Obviously, we do not. Businesses are NOT going to just STOP doing business in the United States, or sell their products in the US, if they are made to pay their fair share of taxes. They WILL be very angry, and do everything possible to scare people into believing their decline in wealth from "obscenely rich" to merely "very rich" will be the end of the Republic. But at the end of the day, businesses, after crying and whining, will have no choice but to accept the hit to their profits or leave their markets to companies willing to fill the void. It is also a strawman to argue that business will simply raise the price of their product in order to compensate for increased taxation - doing so will simply accelerate the decline of a large business focused on greed and the rise of smaller, hungrier companies who are willing to provide products and services at prices the consumer is willing to pay. I don't see that as a bad thing.
But..how does this increase jobs?
Well. The implementation of the above tax structure will result in the elimination of the current budget deficit, and put the US on the path towards paying off the debt! The confidence inspired by a government in the black, not drowning in the red, as history shows us, goes hand-in-hand with domestic economic growth, and that means job creation in the United States.
- Reduce the economic incentives for business to take a "race to the bottom" mindset with regards to labor. This is the dirty little secret the Republicans will NEVER admit to, or openly debate. The GOP loves to pay lip service to a desire to create jobs, but creating real, meaningful American jobs, quite frankly, runs COMPLETELY AT ODDS with their PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: MAXIMIZE WEALTH for the top few percent of people in the nation. The reality that labor can be had for pennies on the dollar makes it impossible to reconcile the promotion of employing Americans in a way that maintains the standard of living Americans have enjoyed for the last several decades with that "bottom line" of MAXIMIZING PROFIT AT ALL COSTS.
Quite bluntly, an American corporate entity (and virtually EVERY business small to General Electric size is legally organized as a corporation), by its very legal definition, has absolutely NO sense or morals or ethics or responsibility to the common good - it exists SOLELY to make as much profit as is legally possible for its shareholders. Period. The CEO of a company who learns that, say, work cleaning an oil spill they are responsible for cleaning up, could be done by locals who need the work to feed their families, their former employment being destroyed by said oil spill, or, the CEO could contract to have prison labor perform the work for less than a dollar an hour per worker, with zero benefits! As sickening as it sounds, this CEO could and likely WOULD be voted out of his job for choosing NOT to use the prison labor!
The "system" in the United States with regards to labor is badly, badly, broken. Every single one of us is now forced to compete with the entire globe for ANY job that can be performed offshore - and with millions of "prison labor" workers for those that can't! - at a salary of less than a dollar an hour. That, in the Republican worldview, is the new standard of living for ALL Americans, if we let them have their way - left unchecked, the amount of jobs available to Americans will continue to decrease, and the pay those lucky enough to have jobs here receive, will continue to decline.
We need to reform the nature of the American Corporation and remove the economic incentive that exists for taking a "race to the bottom" approach to labor. Companies who outsource jobs should not be allowed to sell those products developed and/or manufactured overseas here in the United States and realize profit related to that offshoring. Taxes and/or tarriffs on all outsourced products resold to Americans would remove the incentive to engage in this practice. We can afford to offer tax incentives to these companies to re-invest in development and manufacturing in America since said companies aren't paying any taxes to the government, anyway. Take away the "operating taxes are too high" excuse to bringing the jobs back home, and let business find out for itself which brands Americans will get behind when it comes down to two companies making the same product for Americans, one truly MAKING the product in America, and one making the product in a third-world country.
And quite frankly, just in the name of human decency, it is time to outlaw at the federal level, the existence of the prison labor industry. This disgusting industry has effectively sidestepped the 13th Amendment and needs to be shut down.
When Americans no longer have to compete for jobs with third-world nations at every turn, then and only then will we see a true revival of the middle class in this country. The only way to eliminate this unfair global competition for labor driving down our standard of living to third-world levels is to LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD, not to transfer more wealth to the wealthy.
And now, I'm going to co-opt one of Linda's points!
- Restore Sound Government Finances - and specifically, this means a concerted, focused effort on finding and eliminating government corruption. Period. The single biggest source of wasteful spending in the United States today exists in the out-of-control corruption in the military industrial complex. Every multi-billion dollar, sweetheart, no-bid contract we dole out to the big MIC contractors equals vast fortunes largely squandered in an orgy of waste, inefficiency, and outright fraud. Our dysfunctional system of contracting out defense-related services would rather see us DESTROY a Hummer out in the desert, than replace an inexpensive part for that Hummer. It is time for us to stand up to the MIC, bring in ALL contracts and protocols for a common-sense review, and eliminate the runaway waste and fraud once and for all.
We also need to conduct a top-to-bottom review and overhaul of the lobbying system that exists at the federal level today. The revolving door of career politicians - career lobbyists needs to be closed, and the wasteful and corrupt back-room deals that result in billions of dollars of government giveaways to large business interests must be stopped.
The savings from this scale of reform would result in literally hundreds of billions of dollars a year in taxpayer money saved - which could be used to rebuild the horribly decrepit national infrastructure, and go a very long way towards covering the costs of converting our country to the same system EVERY other civilized country on this planet runs on - and my number four point:
- SINGLE PAYER UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. Why does the cost of employing an American vs. someone from another country differ so much? The single largest factor in this variance is the cost of MEDICAL BENEFITS. As the only civilized nation on earth that feels HEALTH should be a completely for-profit industry, unsurprisingly, the cost of medical care has absolutely spiraled out of control over the last few decades. That means the cost of a doctor visit here, is literally TENS to HUNDREDS of times more than the cost of that same doctor visit in a country that doesn't treat health as a source of profit for some CEO somewhere. Ending this dark chapter in our nation's history and joining the rest of the world in the league of nations that provide for the basic health and well being of its citizenry, will also have the effect of enabling businesses of ALL SIZES to employ workers at a FRACTION of the cost they incur today. This is absolutely a no-brainer and the cost to provide universal health care is absolutely affordable to the US government once we eliminate the deficit through fair taxation and recover the waste in our current bloated budget.
So there you go - there is MY plan.