The Economy, Stupid

The United States of America has plenty of money. It has plenty of money to pay it's workers a living wage. It has plenty of money to build new infrastructure and repair the old infrastructure. We have the money to fund our schools and have health care. We have the money to do all that and still have a strong military.

We don't want to.

Now, I know that this sounds like something controversial to say, but it's really not. I'm not sure there's another way to view it. Mitt Romney got 47% of the vote specifically saying we can't. John Boehner and Paul Ryan have lead the House of Representatives for the last six years, saying we can't. Donald Trump just won the Republican nomination, probably with record vote numbers, saying we can't. The Republican Party has a record number of state legislative seats right now, mostly by saying we can't have these nice things. They say we have to accept a low or no minimum wage. They say we can't afford to better fund infrastructure or education. They say our economy would collapse if we raised the minimum wage. They win at least half the time too.

To be clear here, the American economy is not sustainable. Corporate profits are at record highs and minimum wage employment is not sustainable. The stock market has grown, by and large, for eight years, and most people haven't received accompanying wage increases. Americans are largely maintaining their standard of living off of credit again, and that will create a bubble that will eventually pop. Then when the bubble bursts, there will be another round of mass layoffs, and the responding recovery will once again be accompanied by lower wages than before the burst, and a round of hiring in the "Walmart" economy where wages are considerably lower, because the people working and their labor is easily replaced.

I'm not sure that we can afford to continue in the "pro growth" economy sometimes. I'd like to, because I believe in letting people "win" in the economy, but I just don't know anymore. If Apple makes billions of dollars in a quarter, but doesn't make enough billions, it's considered a loser. If a company makes a huge profit, but it's not bigger than last year's profit, it's a loser. Obviously supply and demand can't keep up with this need for corporate profit, so we see corporations maintain their profits the only ways they can- lay-offs, outsourcing, lower wage hires, de-unionization, ignoring environmental laws, and generally doing all the things that we collectively as a society wish they'd stop. If corporations have to make a bigger profit next year than they do this year, indefinitely, we can't expect that corporations aren't going to take every legal loophole they can to maximize their profits.

To be clear here, there is an extent to which this is a two way street. If you are a country that wants to maintain a high standard of living, you have create a highly skilled workforce that is worth that type of wage. While the United States is guilty on some level of failing at that, it is not as guilty as the pain being inflicted on the American worker suggests. The truth is that a lot of this is straight up corporate greed. While I'm not necessarily a Bernie Sanders super-fan, I do think he hit this nail on the head with a recent Facebook post:

Where I think this picture doesn't do itself justice is that it doesn't show how many people are being paid out of these two pots of money- 1.5 million workers make the minimum wage, while another 1.8 million make less per hour, together making up 4.3% of the work force. Meanwhile, Wall Street handed out $28.5 billion to 167,800- on just bonuses. The over-valuing of executive labor as compared to minimum-wage labor is too far out of control. I'm not a believer in wage caps for the rich, but the poor need to enjoy a better standard of living, without borrowing their way to it- they work at least as hard as Wall Street does. To be clear, compensation in the United States is not based on merit, nor is it at all reasonable.

Which leads me back to my point at the top- all I hear is how mad Americans are. I can see why, their wages aren't growing and they are falling further and further behind. I have trouble buying that they are really mad though. They don't vote like it. They vote mad about their guns, or transgender people in their bathroom, but they don't vote angry about their economic state. Many times, they vote for the people who put them there. A bunch of poor white people in the coal mountains of West Virginia voted for Donald Trump last week! Donald Trump is running around the country talking about how rich and successful he is, and super-poor people that work hard for close to nothing vote for him. Are they really mad?

No, I get it- they don't really understand the problem, and it's easier to blame Mexicans and Muslims than it is to say that maybe the economic benefits of being in a rich country should be wide spread. It's ignorance, not stupidity, to be clear with some liberals who don't get the difference, that these people just don't see the crimes being perpetrated on them for what they are. Walmart is paying you an inadequate minimum wage, without health benefits or a pension system, and then not paying taxes to fund the welfare programs- Food Stamps, Section 8 housing, WIC, etc.- which is pushing the burden of paying that on the middle class- because they don't have loopholes to avoid taxation. They've set up a rigged system where the middle-class have to pay for the poor, which makes the middle class hate the poor and vote for the elected government that is giving Walmart their plum deal in the first place. Resentment bares out more resentment.

It is, and always will be the economy, stupid. That's if you care to get out and vote smart. You may not love Hillary Clinton, but she's talking about good paying jobs, she's talking about raising the minimum wage, she's talking about corporate taxes. Sure, she has her flaws, and she's wrong about some stuff. She's still a far better option for you than Donald Trump, if you want a more equitable, more fair system. The last time a Clinton was in office, things weren't so bad, were they?