Both the rich and ordinary Americans misunderstand their economic interests

by Linda Beale

Both the rich and ordinary Americans misunderstand their economic interests

There is class warfare going on, right now, all across this country.  It’s highlighted by the election gimmicks and gambits of those on the right who claim to be supporting ordinary Americans but whose real intentions show in the results. And it is ultimately a sad statement about Americans’ understanding of what is required for a sustainable economy that supports decent lifestyles for all.

Let’s start by looking at the maps resulting from studies of well-being that identify the states where people are not at all well-off, such as the 2013 survey done by Gallup Healthways, available here.  Those poor states are the reddest of the red belt in Mississippi, Tennessee, Florida and elsewhere across the Deep South–places where I grew up in a decidedly Republican household that bought the GOP economic fallacies hook, line and sinker, and places where today’s populations are worse off in terms of the various measures of economic well-being and happiness than the more progressive northeast and west.

Isn’t it likely that the anti-government, low-tax and pro-wealthy/pro-big business policies of the GOP politicos that have run these states for several decades have something to do with these negative results, and that the more progressive policies in the northeast and northwest are reflected in the much more positive results in those areas?

Yet rural, southern populations continue to proudly proclaim their allegiance, against their own economic interest,  to ill-fated Reaganomics that favors tax cuts (for the wealthy and big business) coupled with  use of  old-time, regressive consumption taxes (toll roads, sales taxes and property taxes),  privatization of public functions (e.g., charter schools managed by for-profit, nontransparent corporations), socialization of losses, militarization, and de-regulation.

The results are harmful at national and state levels, as those same right-leaning voters suffer from poor K-12 education, low-quality public services including neglected roadways, nonexistent or outdated public transportation systems, inferior safety nets, inferior health results, lower literacy rates, higher teenage birth rates, less access to universities, and, yes, fewer and lower-paying jobs.

Of course, those in the top 5% like to think of themselves as suffering, and therefore see any demands for increased minimum wages (that they consider cutting into their ability to capture more and more (rentier)  profits beyond their already unreasonable percentages) as “class warfare.”  See, for instance, this Wall Street Journal video “Do You Make $400,000 a Year But Feel Broke?” from September 5, 2014 depicting the purported hard times for a couple in Chicago making $400,000 a year, buying a $60,000 car every four years, paying a mortgage on a $1.2 million house along with $25,000 a year in maintenance and , entertainment ($10,000 a year) going on vacations ($25,000 a year), club dues ($12,000 a year), and paying for their children’s sports ventures ($10,000 a year). These and other  “necessities” and (purportedly reasonable) discretionary expenditures take all of their after-tax money.

Given that perspective, no wonder those in the top have so little consideration and sympathy for ordinary Americans who have incomes in the $50,000 to $60,000 range, much less for the poor who struggle to put food on the table and heat in the furnace!  They can’t even imagine such limited lives. With the growing inequality in this country, the gap between the upper class and the rest of us is increasingly wider.

The broad trend is clear from a diverse set of data. Median household income growth has badly lagged per capita GDP growth, corporate profits as a share of national income have risen, and stock markets have reached record highs.

Outside the sphere of political debate, you also see the real world impact of inequality. Merrill Lynch recommends an investment strategy to its clients based on the growing economic clout of plutocrats, Singapore Airlines is now selling $18,400 first class cabin tickets, and observers think Apple is going to start selling a $10,000 watch. Conversely, Walmart is now primarily worried about competition from dollar stores. The executives at these companies are not hysterical liberals trying to drum up paranoia about inequality, they are trying to respond to real economic conditions — conditions that have entailed very poor wage growth paired with decent returns for those proserous enough to own lots of shares of stock.

Matt Iglesias, Vox.

The ability to care about those so distant from the well-heeled in-group appears to be diminishing as the gap between the well-heeled and the rest of us widens.  Those super-wealthy corporate managers and CEOs and super-rich shareholders are not likely to recognize in themselves the greed and exploitation of others that their excess returns on capital represent.  As Mitt Romney made so clear, rich folks (i) think of themselves as “meriting” their outsized incomes, in spite of the fact that they often start out with silver spoons and garner greater returns than ordinary folks simply because they have larger capital portfolios to start with and can’t possible achieve a level of productivity of 100s times that of ordinary workers, as current CEO pay-levels claim under “free market” theory; and (ii) find it much easier to blame the misfortune of ordinary Americans on their purported laziness and “lack of personal responsibility.”  (See earlier Taxing Matter posts on Romney’s self-justifying 47% remarks during his presidential campaign.)

But that means the rich (and the GOP most closely aligned with big business and big capital) often support policies that can only lead to greater income and wealth inequality, fewer and fewer Americans able to enjoy a decent, sustainable lifestyle, and the growth of a very small oligarchic elite.  Those policies include making it harder for poor people to vote (justified on the basis of non-existent voter fraud), making it harder for middle class and poor people to go to college (less state monies to universities, less grants and more (profitable-for-big-banks) loans), making it harder to support a family (less public transportation, lower wages, more jobs outsourced, refusal to fund Medicaid expansion, yammering for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act even though the US’s market-based health care system is less efficient, more costly, and lower quality than single-payer systems in most other advanced countries), etc.  The long-run result of these pro-elite pro-corporate policies may well be social chaos, as the rich oligarchy faces off against a suffering and shrinking middle class and a grievously disadvantaged lower class.  That may not be so far away as many of us once thought, given the rapidly growing wealth inequality and the more radical right-wing policies that have moved into the GOP mainstream in the form of Rand Paul and other free-marketarian extremists who denigrate government and want to remove the social-economic safety nets put in place under the New Deal.

They denigrate government, that is, except when they recognize that they need it, such as when the ebola crisis erupted.  Suddenly, they want a Center for Disease Control that really functions well, even though they have pushed government spending down. And they want a TSA that can screen arriving passengers, even though they hated the TSA before.  And they wanted the President to appoint an “Ebola Czar”, even though they scoffed at the idea of administrative officials appointed to oversee important areas before.  They want a vaccine for ebola, but they have made it much harder to accomplish because of their constant push for “reducing government” and cutting research funding (making one of their pet projects to seek out what they think are silly projects that have been funded by the federal agencies).

The free market, in other words, is claimed to be the be all and end all — until push comes to shove and it is obvious that market forces require government intervention.

Consider the compaign for governor here in Michigan.  In his ads, current GOP governor Rick Snyder claims to be a hands-on non-partisan fiscally responsible type who cares about everybody in Michigan.  Those ads brag about how Snyder cares about senior citizens and education –using the (meager) increases in “meals on wheels” to claim that Snyder has made life better for senior citizens, and the state’s increase in support for purportedly public charter schools.  Behind that facade of political PR is a deeply partisan governor who has consistently supported the elite rich capitalists over the majority of Michiganders who are ordinary salary earners working hard (or working hard to find work).

• Snyder signed a “free rider/right to freeload” bill permitting non-union workers in a unionized environment to free-ride on union contracts without paying their share of the costs of the contracts they benefit from and prohibiting unions from using paycheck deductions to collect union dues.  That kind of legislation, sought by the elite owners of capital who benefit from paying lower non-union wages, is (mis)labelled by the pro-wealthy right as “right to work”.  It is really a “right to freeload” law since the union rules it replaces never required anyone to join a union and always allowed workers who benefitted from a collective bargaining agreement to pay only the ‘fair share’ payment of the considerable costs of negotiating an agreement and supporting workers in grievances rather than support all union activities.  As a result, workers can now pay nothing yet call on the union whenever they have a grievance against their employer.  The goal of such laws is to eliminate union support for workers and thereby increase the power of capital owners, so it is particularly sad to see how many workers are fooled into supporting these “right to freeload” laws.
• Snyder supported Michigan legislation that gave big businesses a huge tax cut, while supporting another bill that gave seniors a huge tax increase by taxing their (often meager) pensions.  No wonder the wealthy who own most of the financial assets in the country and benefit from the decades of lobbying by right-wing propaganda tanks against buinsess and capital taxation think he’s a good friend.
• And of course, much of Snyder’s ‘support’ for education has been cuts to state funding for Michigan universities (especially Wayne State, which serves the predominately Democratic southeastern region of the state) that has affected the state’s economy in real ways, as students have to pay more of the cost and universities have less funding for research that directly impacts economic development.  Snyder has also supported an unprecedented increase in charter schools in a system that provides no accountability, doesn’t provide improved educational results, and siphons off public dollars for private profits, through the mechanism of private charter management corporations that run the purportedly “public” charter schools.
• Snyder doesn’t think we need increases in the minimum wage, and his administration has generally shown little interest in figuing out how to help minimum wage workers revive from the Great Recession.  For example, his administration has done nothing to deal with the myriad fly-by-night companies that cheat workers coming and going on wages.

ASIDE:   Here’s one real-life tale illustrating the problem.   I know personally of a man in Michigan hired by a Michigan-registered cleaning corporation that had contracts with at least  two major national corporations to clean stores in southeast Michigan.  The cleaning company claimed that the man was “in training” and therefore not required to be compensated after two weeks of full-time working for the company, including being locked inside a cavernous store overnight to do a major cleaning job. The company refused to pay for the next two weeks, claiming that “corporate headquarters” had made an error and would straighten it out in the next paycheck a month later.

The man ultimately was paid only  a couple of hundred dollars for that entire month, because the company  produced a purported check stub showing a paycheck even when the man representing the company acknowledge that paycheck had never been issued to the man.  The company paid the man on a “piecework” basis for cleaning stores, claiming that a 30,000 square foot store with public restrooms could and should be cleaned for $25(that’s mopping, vacuuming, and cleaning toilets) and that the work could be done in one hour!  The company required the man to pick up cleaning equipment and the company van at the “corporate headquarters” (many miles from his home and many miles from each of the stores to be cleaned) but claimed that it did not have to pay the man for the 3-4 hours per day that he had to spend to drive the company van and equipment to and from various worksites.   The man quit, but has never gotten the company to issue the paycheck that he never received and has never received pay for the many hours spent working for the company moving its van and equipment.

cross posted with ataxingmatter