As I see it, the general attitude of Congressional Republican leaders toward businesses can be summed up a follows:
Give our campaigns financial support. Give us your votes. Run your businesses any way you please. And if you need support or assistance from the government, just ask.
Republicans seem to be, by nature, unconditionally, unabashedly pro-business. This is one reason I have never been a Republican and don't plan on switching. If I'm Progressive, I am a moderate progressive. I'm not entirely opposed to capitalism. Entrepreneurs create jobs for many people who otherwise may be unemployed. Most businesses pay taxes. I've tried to start a number of businesses and failed every time. It takes a considerable amount of courage, determination, and sacrifice to create a successful business. I respect that.
What I don't respect is any businessman/woman who sacrifices or threatens any aspect of the Common Good to increase profits. Any one whose business accepts government subsidies and/or support and yet criticizes government social safety net programs that support the poor is a hypocrite.
The rest of this piece has to do with class. So let's get the definition of class, or lack thereof, out of the way. I like Pew Institutes's formula for determining class based on income. According to this formula the middle class refers to those individuals and households whose income is between 75% and 150 % of the current annual median American income. For 2012, anyone earning between $38,528 and $77, 056 would be considered middle class.
That is not the Middle Class to which politicians try to appeal. There are people making less than $38,528 who think of themselves as Middle Class. I can't imagine the distorted sense of social awareness that would lead one to believe this, but I have read that some $200,000 earners consider themselves to be members of the Middle Class. One may have a net worth of a million dollars, but collect annual earnings of less than $77,056. Then there are households making more than $38,528 who may be below the federal poverty level due to large families. So there does not seem to be a definitive way to determine to which class a household or earner belongs.
I suspect no one would disagree with the idea that households of the top 1% earners (in 2012, those with pre-tax incomes of at least $394,000) should definitely be considered members of the Upper Class.
The U.S. Census reported that for 2013 the official poverty rate in the U.S. was 14.5 % of the U.S. population. That was approximately 45,841,600 people living in poverty (http://www.census.gov/...). The term "extreme poverty" is used to designate those households living on less than two dollars per person per day in a given month before government benefits. According to a Stanford University study (http://web.stanford.edu/...) in 1996, there were 663,000 households living in extreme poverty. By mid-2011, there were 1.65 million. 3.55 million children were living in those 1.65 million poor households in any given month of 2011.
I suspect that few would argue with the idea that those households considered impoverished by the Federal government would definitely belong to the Lower Class. When politicians speak of the "Middle Class" they are probably not referring to the top 1% earners nor to the impoverished.
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No one is totally worthless, regardless of their political orientation. One thing I appreciate about Republicans is that they are up front about the issues. You can tell where they stand. They don't try to coddle the Lower Class. They don't even pretend to care about them. They don't show a whole lot of deference to the Middle Class either. They favor the Upper Class. They want the Upper Class to survive and get richer/more powerful. They don't make any bones about it. Maybe Republicans realize that the advancement of the Upper Class must result in the rest of us losing ground, that is, quality of life, net worth, etc. or maybe they don't. But Republicans don't pretend to care what happens to the majority of Americans.
It seems evident to me that many people who consider themselves Middle Class members must vote Republican. Why do so many Middle Class voters vote Republican despite the blatant efforts of Republican politicians to make the Upper Class better off?
Part of that answer may be the idea that many Americans like the idea of the American aristocracy - a sort of substitute for kings, queens, dukes, duchesses, earls, etc. Perhaps they wish we had never broken up with Britain.
Another possible reason that many in the Middle Class vote Republican is that they feel Republicans being in charge, increases their personal chances of advancing to the Upper Class.
Maybe a number of folks in the Middle Class just want to be on the side of the rich and powerful. Perhaps politics for them seems similar to a super bowl championship game. They may have a favorite team, but when it comes to betting, they choose to put their money on whichever team is more likely to win the contest.
Republicans win elections because so many people who consider themselves to be members of the Middle Class vote for them. When Democratic candidates do win, it seems to be due to Lower Class voter turn-out. The Democrats used to at least make a pretense of caring for the poor. In more recent years they seem to have come to the conclusion that they can't win elections without lots and lots of money. Money that the poor don't have to give. Therefore, Democrats must go out of their way not to alienate wealthy potential individual and group donors.
So Democrats try to appease the rich and powerful at the same time as they try to appeal to the economic concerns of the Middle Class. The Democrats think, probably correctly, that losing Middle Class support at the polls will lose elections. But losing the voting support of the Lower Class can also lose elections for Democrats.
Unfortunately, the Democratic Party does not even offer workable solutions to the problems of poverty, unemployment, the deficient conditions of education and infrastructure in poor communities. This indifference to the poor does not motivate Lower Class people to vote for either party. Members of the Lower Class are smart enough to realize that if a Black president did not make their situation substantially better, they are screwed no matter which party is in control.
I wonder how long a class of people can be put down, deprived, etc. while realizing that the only reason for it is the lack of political will to solve the problem? This is one deficiency inherent in capitalism. The more capitalistic an economic/political system is, the more supportive it will be of injustice and economic inequity in its own country as well as in the world.
Pure socialism may result in a lower standard of living for those in the Upper Class and even some in the Middle Class. But pure capitalism results in poverty and the socio-political effects that accompany poverty. The ideal system may be a combination of capitalism and socialism.
When the Constitution was written, churches cared for the poor; families cared for their members who were infirm. There was no perceived need to put detailed instructions in the Constitution for government support of the disadvantaged. And so it is that Republicans justify their efforts and desires to cut social safety net funding. They claim it is not "constitutional". I read the other day that Obama was, at some point, considering allowing the cuts to occur.
Don't misunderstand me. Like Republicans, I am against government hand outs to those able but unwilling to work or even to those economically disadvantaged people who are able and willing to work. I believe any one able to work who needs a job should have the opportunity to earn, by decent labor, enough to keep him/herself and family healthy. Unlike Republicans, I believe, that if private enterprise cannot manage to hire those people for such jobs, then the government should do so. I base this on the principles that all people are created equal and that everyone possesses an intrinsic right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Living on handouts does not promote life, liberty, or happiness. The United States is a large country. To adequately provide for and maintain a quality Common Good* for everyone would require millions of additional workers.
For those who are economically disadvantaged and unable to work, the government should provide enough for them to prevent health deterioration.
If there were a way to incorporate these ideas into the Constitution, the poor would have firm opportunities to better their lives. Even if there is a way, there also needs to be the will.
In families of the "higher" classes where there is a need to work, there is generally one or more bread winners with decent jobs that afford the family a healthful lifestyle. This is rarer in Lower Class families. Higher class bread winners are more likely to have safe and healthful working conditions and to be treated reasonably by their employers than are lower class bread winners. If members of the higher classes opt to live in a rental unit, those units are more likely to be safe, adequately insulated, and free of allergens and toxins than units rented by lower class families. Primary and secondary school students from higher class neighborhoods are more likely to be prepared for gainful employment or for additional education/training upon high school graduation than students from poor neighborhoods. Families from higher classes generally have access to more and better aspects of the publicly owned/administered Common Good than do families from the lower class. Higher class families are much less likely to have a toxic waste dump or a fracking operation located in their neighborhood than lower class families.
Many poor countries treat their poor citizens inhumanely. Perhaps there is not enough money in those poor countries to do otherwise. The United States of America does not have that excuse. There is enough money earned annually in this country to afford every household the wages needed for a healthful lifestyle. Total earnings for 2012 according to the Total Personal Income U.S. chart at www.bbber.unm.edu/econ/us-tpi.htm were $13,401,868,693,000. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2008-2012 American Community Survey (http://factfinder2:census.gov/...), there were 115,226,802 households in the country. Total income divided by number of households equals more than $117,000 per household. That amount is more than adequate to enable every household member in the United States to live a healthful lifestyle with enough left over to preserve the existence of the Upper Class.
The continuing dire plight of the Lower Class poor and underemployed is advantageous to both Republicans and Democrats. I believe there is an implied but non-articulated, almost subliminal message to Middle Class voters in the campaign rhetoric of both major political parties that, if it was spoken aloud, would sound something like the following:
As bad as things are now, which is, of course, the fault of the other party, if you don't vote for me you could end up in the Lower Class.
That threat is only effective as long as poverty and deprivation persist. If the Republicans represent the Upper Class, and the Democrats focus most of their attention and concern on the Middle Class, perhaps we need a third political party to represent that segment of the American population otherwise known as the "Lower Class".
*The Common Good encompasses that which is owned and/or administered by some level of civil government and which benefits citizens in general but which most individual citizens could not afford. Such things as the infrastructure, libraries, public health protection, environmental preservation, the courts, law enforcement, national defense, firefighting, public education, public parks, public playgrounds, public green spaces, etc. are all aspects of the Common Good.