We need
to clear something up. Conservatives say that the economy can’t
thrive without capitalists willing and able to risk money to produce
goods, and employ workers. Meanwhile, liberals say that the economy
is driven by consumer demand that employs capitalists. The tax
implications of each of these apparently opposite belief systems are
significant.
One
side wants to eliminate taxes on capitalists, eliminate regulations
that burden them, and eliminate minimum wages that they say keep them
from hiring some people. Further, they want assistance programs
ended because they counter- productively support people who would
otherwise be energized to accept lower paid work or to accept work
that safety net programs make economically unfeasible. The absence
of these programs would also energize people to take care of them
selves by saving for contingencies. They believe the government can
neither afford to support needy people nor make good on its annuity
commitments or deposit guarantees, and they want to sell off or
privatize government assets.
The
other side wants safety net programs protected and expanded by
raising taxes on the rich—the oligarchs who they believe just want
to further line their pockets at the expense of working people. They
believe corporations and the very rich are not paying their share of
taxes, and that consumers, not capitalists, make the economy thrive.
They hold that government is employer of last resort and Keynesian
economic leveler in times of turmoil.
As
usual, the truth lies somewhere in between. Capitalists need
consumers who can afford to spend, and consumers need employment that
allows them to both live decently and save. Congress has screwed
things up so badly that the government needs consumers to spend, not
save, and it needs capitalists to keep giving Congress money so they
can campaign to maintain power.
The
rub these days is that very few people earning the national minimum
wage can afford to both live and save for contingencies. In reality,
minimum wage jobs are mostly home to adults who need to support a
family, not mewling and puking babies who just need a foot in the
door. If you’re a displaced coal miner, and all you can find is
work that pays $7.25 an hour, you can’t keep six kids in doctors,
shoes, shelter, school and gruel, and save. The reality is that
CEO’s, financiers, and fat legislators who make top incomes every
year have no standing to call for elimination of safety nets and
scrapping minimum wages. The reality is that people who think the
country can provide a wish list full of benefits by just taxing the
rich are relying on murky math and childish selfishness, not
egalitarian principles.
Around
here, we have one magic answer: if you think one side or the other is
entirely correct, you are entirely wrong. Congress is the lab-rat
experiment that proves “either / or” produces only damaging
gridlock and obstruction.
