Why the Rich Don't Care About Jobs for the Rest of Us
By Paul Buchheit
May 11, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - Many of us wonder what
possible reason could exist for the failure to invest in American
infrastructure, to create millions of jobs as a result, and to help everyone in
the long run. Analysis reveals personality traits and beliefs and misconceptions
that might account for such behavior. Here's a look inside the billion-dollar
brain:
1. It's All About Me
Several
studies by Paul Piff and his colleagues have revealed that upper-class
individuals tend to be narcissistic, with a clear sense of entitlement. Worse
yet, they believe their
talents and attributes - genius, even - have earned them a rightful position
of status over everyone else.
Scarier yet, according to one
study, the American sense of entitlement has been growing
over the past 30 years, despite the fact that most of us have lost ground to the
super-rich. And most disturbing is that 'upper-class' individuals tend to behave
more
unethically than average citizens.
This "all about me" attitude
means that the wealthy don’t have to depend on others, and that they have
less need to understand the feelings of others. This directly impacts our daily
lives. The greater the concentration of wealth, the less a society invests in
infrastructure. Our investment in infrastructure as a percent of
GDP dropped by 60 percent from 1968 to 2011.
As the super-rich take their
helicopters to and from work, they're having multi-million-dollar
bunkers built
under their houses to sustain them when the middle-class revolution comes.
2. It's All About Lazy People Who Refuse to Work
Congressmen and CEOs don't normally see the people affected by their actions.
This leads to a resentment of the poor, and imagined abuses in the minds of
people like
Paul Ryan and
Scott Walker, both of whom likened the safety net to a "hammock," and Texas
Republican
Louie
Gohmert, who decried the purchase of crab legs by people on a $5-a-day food
stamp budget.
John Boehner daydreamed: "This idea that has been born...that, you know, 'I
really don't have to work...I think I'd rather just sit around.'"
Almost all healthy adult Americans, of course, want to work. But in 2011 Senate
Republicans killed a
proposed $447 billion jobs bill that would have added about two million jobs to
the economy. Members of Congress
filibustered Nancy Pelosi's "Prevention of Outsourcing Act," even as a
million jobs were being
outsourced, and they temporarily
blocked the "Small Business Jobs Act." In April, 2013 only one member of
Congress bothered to show up for a hearing on
unemployment. When asked what he would do to bring jobs to Kentucky,
Mitch McConnell responded, "That is not my job. It is the primary
responsibility of the state Commerce Cabinet."
The lazy people who refuse to work are, in reality, the tax avoiders who are
getting $2.2 trillion without having to work for it.
The Safety Net costs us $370
Billion.
But
Tax Avoidance costs us $2,200 Billion (tax expenditures, tax underpayments,
tax havens, and corporate nonpayment). That's $2.2 trillion, six times more than
the safety net, most of it benefiting the wealthiest Americans.
3. It's All About Waiting for the Free Market to Work Its Magic
Conservative analyst
Michael Barone said, "Markets work. But sometimes they take time."
Thirty-five years, so far. Beneficiaries of low taxes and deregulation
desperately want to believe that "trickle-down" works, or at least to convince
middle America that it works. They want to believe, against all logic, that
lower taxes mean more tax revenue.
All this in the face of mountains of data disproving their supply-side ideas. As
far back as
1984 the Treasury Department concluded that most tax cuts lose revenue. More
recent studies by
Saez
et al. and by the
Economic Policy Institute found no connection between tax rates and economic
growth, and
Piketty, Saez, and Stantcheva determined that the optimal tax rate could be
over 80 percent.
There is also hard evidence that cutting taxes on the rich fails to stimulate
job creation, and that raising taxes on the rich has the opposite, beneficial
effect. The
facts come from Kansas and Minnesota. Despite early
optimism by trickle-down adherents, tax cuts in Kansas have been
disastrous, leading to revenue losses, cutbacks in education and health
care, and sluggish job growth. In Minnesota, on the other hand, tax increases on
the rich have led to
higher wages,
low unemployment, and rapid business growth.
The rich don't care about creating jobs. They don't care about
Robert Reich's insight about more and more jobs being lost to smart
technologies, leading to a society in which "those who create or invest in
blockbuster ideas will earn unprecedented sums and returns," leaving much less
for the rest of us.
The solution, says
Chris
Hedges, is to take on corporate power by instituting "a nationwide public
works program, especially for those under the age of 25, to create conditions
for full employment." Every American, of course, deserves the opportunity to
earn a living wage. It will take a revolution against narcissism to make it
happen.Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, an active
member of US Uncut Chicago, founder and developer of social justice and
educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org)
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