It's been quite some time that I've been writing news for 99ers -- that's unemployed folk like me who were unable to get a job within the 99 weeks of unemployment that the federal government provides -- and in that time, I've learned quite a bit about what makes this country tick, politically speaking. And it's kind of depressing. Kind of angering, and kind of depressing.
You see, there's no one left in politics that has his eye out for the People anymore. Mother Jones said it best: the Democrats used to get funding from the unions. The unions more-or-less looked out for Joe Everyman. But with the unions basically disintegrated, and corporations basically the only organizations that are both wealthy and politically active, even the Democrats are bowing to the altar of big business.
Witness: Obama's passage of the Bush Tax Cuts was packaged together with a 30% tax cut for corporations that the Republicans weren't even asking for. And now, rather than do anything to use public sector money to directly help ease unemployment (by, say, extending unemployment benefits past 99 weeks, or hiring people directly), he's giving it to businesses in hopes that they will start hiring.
The problem is, with the market as cracked as it is, businesses don't have any incentive to hire. Giving them money isn't the same thing as giving them incentive -- it's just giving them the ability to to more of what they ARE incentivized to do. In this case, it's investing in low-risk bonds, which is safer than risking the money hiring someone that might not give as good an RoI as the bonds do.
Cutting taxes only creates jobs when the market is already strong. When businesses are better served by not creating jobs, cutting taxes only helps them do whatever non-job-creation thing they're already doing. And with no one left on Capitol Hill to point out the obvious, all we're doing is handing more and more money to the people who don't need it at the expense of the people who do -- and the rest of the country as well, but I'll explain that part in my next post.
