It’s the Revenues, Stupid!
Why isn’t the obvious more obvious? Spending cuts, regardless whether they are made by individuals, businesses, or governments, reduce economic activity. Reduced economic activity causes layoffs. It could be the local hair dresser having to layoff an assistant, it may be local government issuing pink slips to neighborhood fire fighters, or it might be an auto manufacturer closing down an assembly line, the pattern is the same; when spending goes down jobs are almost always lost. It really is that simple. Repeat that for emphasis. IT REALLY IS THAT SIMPLE
If Republicans want to talk about disappointing unemployment numbers, if they really cared about “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs”; they wouldn’t be urging cuts to government spending now, since government spending creates jobs. Republicans don’t admit that. They prefer to lie and state that “government doesn’t create jobs, businesses do”. Sure, businesses create jobs; often when the government is ready to pay for them. Construction firms hire workers to build stadiums and convention centers, defense contractors hire workers to build new weapon systems. Private engineers work on designing commercial space vehicles, and private universities employ bio-technicians seeking cures for cancer, all through government spending. Private sector growth with public sector funding; that happens all the time, but the public sector itself has been hard hit over the last few years due to a hardening Republican antagonism toward it.
Unfortunately, from a right wing perspective, governments can’t be counted on to hand over all of our tax dollars directly to the private sector. Some of it actually goes to funding public employees; you know teachers, police officers, fire fighters, public health workers – that sort of thing. And if some of those workers actually expect a real living wage in return for their efforts, well that constitutes a problem. Consideration of real worker needs runs directly counter to the current prevailing business model; which is to continually cut worker costs to further maximize corporate profits.
Businesses employ workers and workers are viewed as expendable, but governments employ citizens; the relationships fundamentally differ. There is an added dimension of accountability in the public sector for the actual well being of the work force – its citizens. The public sector, by very definition, does not exist solely to profit the ownership class. I suppose that’s considered a radical concept, but if so it’s as old as America. And the battle to crush it is as old as our nation also.
Republicans have no problem with our tax dollars going to help out businesses directly. Our tax code is increasingly a blue print for doing exactly that, with the corporate lobby present whenever exemptions are crafted and loopholes opened. Meanwhile the “Privatization” movement continues unabated in its assault against anything that contains the word “public” in it. The opposition is restricted to public ownership – of anything. The privatization movement has no objection to governments collecting taxes from the public to provide for services that the public needs, as long as those services are run by and preferably owned by private for profit corporations.
When governments are systematically deprived of revenues the public begins to suffer, because governments exist to serve the public, not to serve shareholders. When governments are sufficiently starved of funds they are forced to start consuming their own systems, much as a human body does when deprived of essential nutrition. First responders lose their jobs, public school class sizes double, library hours are drastically cut. Next come the bankruptcy sales. Public assets cross the butcher block, handed off to private entities to own or at least manage for pennies on the actual dollar in a massive transfer of resources paid for and built with tax payer dollars into profiteering hands.
Though long term deficits are a significant problem, slashing government spending is hardly the best solution – restoring government revenues is. It is no coincidence that Republicans are ruthless in their drive to cut government spending while nixing every reasonable proposal to increase government revenues. Their conscious intent is to starve government. Tax increases might sting the rich, but spending cuts often kill the poor. The poor, however, simply aren’t relevant to most corporate business plans.
Our current debt problems date back to the massive cuts in government revenues that George W. Bush enacted with his give away to the rich tax cuts that reversed the budget surpluses under President Clinton, who actually raised taxes on the rich. The super wealthy, who now own the Republican Party (and much of the Democratic one also) have begun cashing in on America; by cashing out of it. Depriving public coffers diverts money into their pockets, money they can use elsewhere. The continuing collapse of the public sector was as inevitable as it is intentional. Its collapse is advantageous to powerful vested interests that abhor regulations and resent the competition.
The increased flow of money to the rich hasn’t benefited America. Even where that money has actually funded job creation it has mostly been overseas. American workers continue to get squeezed by disappearing benefits and stagnant pay. The unemployment rate, alarming as it is on its face, is actually dangerously deceptive. When living wage jobs are replaced by minimum wage ones, unemployment figures remain unchanged. Meanwhile the minimum wage continues to lose ground against a rising cost of living
A look at the low priority given by the Republican Party to repairing and upgrading our aging national infrastructure is highly instructive. America’s national infrastructure was once a strong bipartisan concern. Funding the interstate freeway system was a Republican initiative. For several decades after World War II corporate wealth creation centered on an economically strong United States optimized to harvest, enhance and distribute world resources to a largely domestic market. For that model to work America needed a state of the art infrastructure, plus a stable and educated work force with the economic where with all to consume most of the products we created..
The well being of American workers, the well being of America itself, is fess less important in today’s multi-national corporate world than it was in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. It just doesn’t matter as much now if other nations equal and then surpass the infra structure that long gave America a competitive edge. Corporate growth is focused now beyond America’s borders. Rather than paying their fair share in taxes to keep America strong, the 1% and the corporations they control choose to deprive government of money needed to meet public needs. They want it instead for private investments. America has become an expense they are working to cut.
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