Note: The diary below incorporates the incredibly helpful dkos comments I received on a previous version of this idea.
As a Wisconsin business professor, most people I engage think that left-wing economic policies are bad for business because they are akin to socialism, and right-wing policies are good because they embody free market capitalism. But they're wrong. The facts actually suggest that socialistic policies are much better for the economy than capitalistic ones.
Democrats simply haven't done a good job explaining how their policies are better than republican ones for the economy. Over the last century, the economy has grown more than twice as fast under democratic presidents than republican ones. That's a statistically significant difference that holds up under different time windows (last 50 years, last 30 years), and equates to roughly a 10 percent bigger paycheck for each of us after eight years of a democratic president than a republican one.
How do socialist economic policies grow the economy? The NFL helps solve this puzzle as each of its 32 separately owned teams have enjoyed double digit revenue growth over the last two decades (from average team revenues of $43 million in 1990 to $243 million in 2010) precisely because of the league's radical socialist economic policy.
The NFL recognized over fifty years ago that taking money from the rich teams and giving it to the poor ones increased the competitiveness of the league, the quality of play, and the overall value of its content to fans and broadcasters. Each team shares roughly 80 percent of their revenues with their competitors -- far more than any other professional sports league. But teams are still very motivated to win because they want to maximize the 20 percent of revenues they get to keep. Winning drives up ticket sales, the size of the customer/fan base, and ability to attract top talent.
You'll find the other half of the argument after the jump.
Contrast the NFL's economic success with professional baseball before 2000. Up until then, baseball had no revenue sharing -- each team was on their own. This structure led to tremendous income inequality between the richest and poorest teams. The height of inequality occurred in 1999 when the richest team enjoyed revenues 14 times larger than the poorest team. Between 1995 and 2000, only three of the 30 teams managed to make a profit, and the richest team (the Yankees) won four out of six World Series.
The leaders of professional baseball grew very concerned with this trend, especially when they compared their league to the thriving NFL. They decided to institute a NFL-style revenue sharing policy in 2000. In the decade since, professional baseball revenues have nearly tripled, and nine different teams have won the World Series (the Yankees have only won once since 2001). This left-wing economic policy has been just as beneficial to the baseball industry as it has been to the football industry.
So what would this NFL revenue-sharing idea look like in a non-sports industry? Nearly half of the U.S. states have set up mandatory programs in the highly competitive hospital industry where rich hospitals share their revenues with poor hospitals. The rich hospitals agree to this revenue sharing arrangement because they don't want the poor hospitals to close and send a swarm of uninsured patients through their marbled doors. This revenue sharing arrangement has been a boon to most hospitals, as typically the richest 20 percent of hospitals fund the other 80 percent. The poor hospitals can now pay top dollar for the best employees, buy better equipment, and be more competitive.
But if radical socialist economic policies are so good, why did communist Russia's economy collapse? Because they were monopolistic (one state-run company for each industry), which is very similar to many U.S. industries right now. The communist monopolies had no competition, just like most industries in the U.S. are dominated by just a few large companies (e.g. Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, Koch Industries).
My job is to teach students how to destroy their competitors, steal customers, squash pesky innovative companies threatening their business, and do whatever it takes to win in the marketplace. Monopoly power is great for the lucky company that survives, but terrible for the economy as a whole.
Democratic 'socialist' policies tend to spread the wealth across companies and decrease income inequality. This makes monopolistic businesses try harder, and helps the industry as a whole grow and innovate faster. Of course the rich and powerful scream really loudly against Obama and the democrats because they don't want the rules of the game to encourage entrepreneurs and innovations, which would truly free the markets. These monopolistic tyrants are mortally afraid of innovators and competitors who will ruin their precious monopolies.
Donald Trump may know how to become a titan (by entrenching his own power), but Karl Marx knew how to grow an economy (by bringing up the bottom).
Note: Thanks to 'mad mystic hammering' for the amazing photo of Karl Marx in vintage Packers gear!