Letter 2 America for November 30, 2012

Dear America,

President Obama apparently felt obliged to meet with representatives of small business a few days ago.  Leaders of that "community" were invited to the White House, and when they emerged from their meeting, their answer to the question, what did you tell The President, was the same as it always is with these guys: we need more certainty before we can invest in our businesses.  The problem with that answer is...well, there are two problems.  The first is that it is the self-serving excuse that business uses for everything--not liking Obamacare, sitting on their hoard of a few trillion dollars for a couple of years now, sending jobs and physical plant abroad, etc.  The second is, what the hell does that mean?  What is it that they're not certain about?  And worst of all, no one ever asks them.  Well, I have some suggestions about how to respond to anything they might answer to that question.

Let's say they answer, taxes.  My response would be to tell them they can be certain that taxes on the top marginal rate payers will go up within two years to the levels that prevailed during the Clinton administration.  The virtue of that answer is that such is probably the case, but if it doesn't happen, small business will get a windfall if they expand to levels they can afford on that assumption but taxes on them do not increase.  In fact, my guess is that they are already assuming that, so claiming uncertainty about taxes is nothing but a scam.  But let's say they answer that they don't know what Obamacare will cost them.  My answer is, read the law, because it is what it's going to be.  And how do I know that?  Because Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts told me so.  He told us all so.  Thus, we know that it isn't going to cost the $3 trillion these guys have in the bank, so they should invest some of it in their businesses.  But let's say they answer honestly and say that they don't know whether there will be demand for goods created through increased investment and production.  Well, the answer then is, there never is certainty as to whether the consuming public will buy what you want to sell, so you're no worse off in that respect than you've ever been.  But if what you are really saying is that you don't know if consumer demand in general will increase and thus stimulate the economy, the answer is, stop thwarting efforts to create jobs, stop sending them to China, and stop milking your current employees for more production without increasing their wages.  Stop prophesying slow demand, planning on it, and thus making it happen.  This must be the first period in the history of business in which it has been acceptable to say that you aren't going to try to make more money now because it is not certain that you will be able to make it next year.

But the reason they get away with this casuistry is that politicians like President Obama humor them and have special meetings with them to give them legitimacy when they don't deserve it.  The remnants of the great recession that we are still dealing with are the gift of the Republican conservative complex (Rcc), including the Republican Party, reactionary Tea Partiers, Blue Dog Democrats, financiers and businessmen who now want people to go to college to pay for their own training when business used to train its own workers.  They now want us to provide for our own retirements, but they want to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits and eligibility as opposed to inducing employee loyalty to an employee-loyal company that lasts for a lifetime, and through which the preponderance of pension funding for old age used to come to us.  And all the while, those at the top continue to enrich themselves by using the infrastructure we all pay for...the schools, the first responders of all kinds, the public utilities, the roads, the municipal services and the like.  They insist that they built their businesses all by themselves and give no recognition, much less compensation, to either their workers or the public who provide the labor and infrastructure on which private fortunes are built. But this uncertainty nonsense doesn't come just from business.

On Wednesday, Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee unveiled his plan for "avoiding the fiscal cliff" with a caveat about uncertainty being the cause of our economic troubles.  On the issue of taxes, he wants to produce revenue by "raising taxes" in accord with the Republican Party's preferences: allow only $50,000 worth of deductions and eliminate tax loopholes, which he says would comprise $1.3 trillion...not nearly enough to eliminate the deficits anticipated over the next ten years.  But--and this is the tip off that it is all code for more of the same thing they have been saying all along--he doesn't want to pass extension of the Bush tax cuts for the middle class without passing them for the rich as well because, he says, the public wants them (congress) to handle the problem as a whole, that despite polls that show that 60% of the American public wants the rich to pay more in taxes while the rest of us stay as we are.  And Corker says that he floated his plan, which includes increases in the age of eligibility for both Social Security (which has no relationship to the debt or the deficit) and Medicare, because he wants to be the voice of compromise and reason.  Where is the compromise?  Where's the reason?  This is all what the Republicans have wanted all along: to start down the path toward diminishing the effectiveness of Social Security and Medicare if not eliminating them altogether and giving the wealthy even more wealth.

The bottom line is that all these fulminations from Republicans about compromise and a new found willingness to do so is nothing but a rephrasing of their previous positions.  It is ear candy.  I don't want candy in my ears.  In fact, I don't want compromise.  I continue to believe that there are only two options for the Democratic Party and the people of the United States.  One is to temporarily extend the Bush tax cuts to 98% of us now and worry about the rich later.  They can take care of themselves anyway.  The other is to just let all the consequences of failure to compromise happen.  The Republicans designed them thinking that the Democrats would blink first...again.  But let's fool them this time.  There's an old expression that applies in situations like this in which people equivocate about what they intend to do, in this case, compromise.  The Democrats should tell the Republicans what the American electorate told them a few weeks ago.  Fish or cut bait, Republicans.  Make a real compromise proposal or it will be made for you.

Your friend,

Mike