Blame the Victim Economic Theory

Paul Krugman in the New York Times nails the one percenters and their minions thinking well in their blaming the victim excuses for unemployment.

He points out that study after study has shown poor worker skills to be a false assumption as promoted by an article in Politico by Jamie Dimon a JP Morgan Chase CEO. It is the idea that if you just keep on saying something, even if it’s false, it’s true. Thus, this has become a popular idea in this country. But the data shows that employment is lacking in all educational groups compared to the pre-Great Recession. Krugman says simply if employers want better workers and greater talent, pay them more.

This type of thinking contributes to an increasingly class differentiated society. In this society, a lot of folk buy the malarkey of the ultra wealthy and really don’t realize where they are in the class structure.

We hear this stuff all the time. The evil welfare mother’s myth by Ronald Reagan is a good example. Never happened, no such person, but lot’s of folk believe it. Folk in families where both spouses have to work longer and harder to maintain the lifestyle of the parents even believe this fabrication. Another example came from a friend with this T-Shirt bit: “Ineptocracy ) in-ep-toc’-ra-cy) – A system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.”

It sounds good, does great scapegoating, and promotes as illusion that the middle class or those who think they are in it, are supporting deadbeats. The problem is it is completely lacking in facts.

Recently in the news we are hearing lots about the millionaire couple, Lord Colin and Lady Andrea Chisholm, III that scammed the government getting $167,000 in welfare. But nowhere have I heard how the Chrisoms got their millions to begin with. How much different are they from the owners of Wal-Mart who pay their workers so poorly that they government has to supplement the workers incomes with food stamps, etc.?

If we followed the guidelines of taxes when we began them tax rates would be much different. Originally, it was only the rich that were supposed to pay taxes. The average family was not expected to pay any income tax. Today the median income in this country is $52,100, thus anyone making that or less should not be paying income taxes. Warren Buffet gets it but also benefits from it by paying less income tax than his secretary. He does this by investing his money so his income comes from dividends, capital gains that is lower than regular income tax. A tax loophole created by rich lobbyists for the rich folk who control congress through their wealth/contributions.

I remain amazed that so many folk blame the wrong people for this country’s economic woes. We know what works. We saw it in the New Deal Keynesian economics that worked up till Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, today that is not in the memory banks of most Americans. Negativity sells and so the untruths about blaming the poor for our troubles persist.