The goal is obvious enough - to create a new wealth-worshiping narrative while symbolically bifurcating the workforce into two value groups -- first, a group of virtuous elites, called the 'job creators', worthy of protection from any deficit-cutting efforts - and second, the relatively worthless masses that constitute the other 98% of the population.
This has two benefits - one, it shields the hedge fund managers, former subprime mortgage brokers and other Wall Street elites, rebranding them from a group that had recently viewed with suspicion and places them safely into a newly minted category of saints thoroughly beyond reproach. Two, the second benefit is the new narrative works to convince average workers that they are not fit to lick the boots of these elites and should be happy with whatever scraps they get from the economic table, if any.
Want to see the job creators? Look in the mirror. Every day you purchase a product or service with your hard-earned dollars you are driving a market that creates jobs through your choices. Somebody has to come up with the product, but that product goes nowhere without consumers. No consumers, no jobs. Economics requires both supply AND demand. The one-sided philosophy just doesn't work. Like trying to clap with one hand. You can get temporary starts on the supply side alone, but only for a certain number of cycles, only up to a point - where those at the bottom finally run out of chips and get too indebted to stay in the game anymore.
And that's the fundamental problem today. With all the money piled into the supply-side end of the pool, and with the consumers broke at the demand end, the economy grinds to a clattering halt. You can't have all the income increases going to the top income groups and expect the consumers to magically keep the economy growing by just going ever deeper into debt while their wages erode. The math just breaks down, as finally occurred in 2008.
The end result is too much debt, public and private, trying to compensate for the lack of broad-based income growth. This is an inseparable effect of wealth over-concentration. The debt problem and the wealth concentration problem are one and the same. One's liability is another's asset. The balance sheet must balance -- even when the assets aren't worth anything.
And that's the fundamental problem today. With all the money piled into the supply-side end of the pool, and with the consumers broke at the demand end, the economy grinds to a clattering halt. You can't have all the income increases going to the top income groups and expect the consumers to magically keep the economy growing by just going ever deeper into debt while their wages erode. The math just breaks down, as finally occurred in 2008.
The end result is too much debt, public and private, trying to compensate for the lack of broad-based income growth. This is an inseparable effect of wealth over-concentration. The debt problem and the wealth concentration problem are one and the same. One's liability is another's asset. The balance sheet must balance -- even when the assets aren't worth anything.
Let's see, George Orwell, beginning thinking about his novel, 1984, in 1944 and it was published in 1949. At the heart of the novel is a concept called, "doublespeak." How prophetic, and how good we have become in using it. Why don't the Republicans just rename themselves, "Big Brother?"
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