Now that I've gotten over my post-election depression, I'm gonna start posting more.
We constantly hear about the poor rich people from Republicans. The poor rich people, unless we give them their tax cuts, they won't create jobs for the rest of us. The poor rich people, they can't afford a third house because of the tax increases. The poor rich people, because of the taxes they had to buy a Gulfstream IV, and not the shiny new Gulfstream V.
But, we also hear that the republicans are thinking about the poor when they are considering this. They are thinking about the poor, who without the tax cuts wouldn't have a job. Such a social conscience! I know! But, wait a second, what if we were to tax them more? Would there be any carrot that we could swing out in front of them to force them to hire more people? Is there any other way of expanding business, other than - let's be blunt - bribery?
Keep with me until after the jump!
If there isn't, we are truly doomed. To consider bribery a legitimate political argument is an absurdity. We don't consider it legitimate in any other circumstance - in most it's referred to as a ransom!
Wait, though. Let's just think about it for a minute. If they are just not hiring people in order to hold the economy ransom, that means that there is a lot of capacity in the economy that isn't being used. The economy could be producing a lot more, but there isn't demand for it. And, of course, the reason that there isn't demand for it is because people don't have jobs and so they can't buy anything. It's a cycle, of course, and it reinforces itself. So, if we capitulate this time, then we're really fucked. They'll keep demanding more and more, like they always have. We need to create ways of reversing this cycle, as we have had historically.
Thus, the problem isn't one of jobs, no at root it's a problem of demand. We can strengthen demand through giving the poor people more money - through welfare or public sector jobs (we need infrastructure investment!). Once the demand has increased, then either the producers compete and create more money, or they get fucked by the market. Someone else will start a business in order to meet that demand (or expand an existing one, it's not like most of these are monopolistic markets anyway).
The real job creators aren't the captains of industry. The real job creators are you and I. Capitalism isn't valuable because it's oligarchic. It's valuable because it's democratic. Demand is democratic, and it is how we make capitalism responsive to everyone. When the conservatives are saying that the market will solve some issue or other, they don't really mean this, but they should. And we have to force them to do so. We need to spread this message and force the conservatives to listen. I think they will, but it requires vigilance on our part because the only way to force them to do so is through popular sentiment.