“Socialist.” That one word is thrown around more than any other by the right wing trying to dismiss or slander anyone from me to President Obama. And since it’s hard to factually shoot down–unlike Obama not being born in the US–it lingers a lot longer, existing in that nebulous region of rumors you don’t have to prove. So it doesn’t matter that Obama is the furthest thing from a socialist president you can get, the label still sticks.
I’ve heard many rumblings from Wall Street types and corporations that he’s “anti-business,” but his record could not be friendly to business. From agreeing to the bank bailout to the healthcare overhaul the private sector wants (making it cheaper for them to provide healthcare) to cash for clunkers to the stimulus package to not ending offshore drilling, all of his policies are bending over backwards to give the private sector the things they need to create job growth. Even if it pisses off the liberal base that voted for him in the first place. Obama notoriously didn’t end the deficit exploding Bush tax cuts–a key campaign promise was pledged that he would–but people still think he’s a socialist? Even after he’s publicly said he hopes to be the first billion dollar political candidate? That’s a pretty piss poor socialist. As Bill Maher said “Socialist? He’s barely a liberal.”
Obama isn’t a socialist (neither am I) it’s just that corporations, business, and fiscal conservatives have gotten everything they’ve wanted since the Reagan administration to a degree that now only getting 95 percent seems outrageous. It’s like when a spoiled rotten child suddenly gets a new nanny that will only give them ice cream after their homework and they think it’s tyranny. In an age of outrageous income inequality–the top 1 percent now makes more than the bottom 55 percent combined–it’s another Bill Maher joke I keep using to explain fiscal conservative’s mentality “Let’s say a group of a hundred people had a pizza with a hundred slices, and the first guy ate EIGHTY slices. Then when you say ‘Hey, why don’t you just eat 79 slices?’ They scream ‘That’s socialism.'”
As someone who’s spent a little time working for Wall Street I can tell you the absolute last thing they think about is “Gee, I wonder if a CEO making more money by laying off workers is bad for America?” They don’t think about the long term at all. They want to get rich, filthy rich preferably, and retire at 35. They will argue that Reaganomics is what’s best for America and cutting their taxes stimulates “job growth” (increasingly untrue in a global world where that money can be spent to create jobs in China just as easy as California), but the only real argument is that they’re rich, they like being rich, and they want to hang onto as much of their money as they possibly can.
They don’t care that increasing their taxes from already low levels of 39 percent to 36 percent will close hospitals, cut firefighter wages, eliminate teacher benefits, and force government layoffs. That doesn’t enter into their thinking so much as seeing that extra 3 percent in their bank accounts to join other money they don’t need. Everyone thinks they’re squeezed even when they’re not because they’re the ones paying it, the one thing nobody thinks is that they’re being taxed too little.
So I don’t have a problem with the rich in and of themselves. A guy makes 10 million to manage a shoe company over his workers who make 60 grand, great, good for him. What is less than great is when that guy lays off 30 percent of his workforce, sends another 30 percent overseas for cheaper labor, and pays the remaining 40 percent a reduced wage. All that money saved on labor is seen as increased “profits,” he pockets half of it, and one guy who runs a shoe company that was making 10 million now makes 150 million. Of course, all the workers he’s laid off now don’t have the wages to buy extra pairs of shoes, and long term the ripple effects have become disastrous (the IMF now speculates China will surpass the US economically in 5 years as a result of the middle class slipping into the lower class here as their lower class rises into the middle class).
You can’t trust the rich to say “I’ve had enough money for a while now and you can regulate me more and increase my taxes.” If you’re waiting for that day, clear your calendar. Biologically, we’re programmed to consume and hoard as much as we can based off centuries of almost starving to death. It’s not necessarily greed so much as a survival mechanism to overindulge whenever we can. It makes sense for rich Americans to squall and kick and bellyache whenever we ask them to do basic things like regulate the banking industry or not outsource American jobs or increase their taxes or not add to America’s unemployment rate to save a dollar. What doesn’t make sense is shaping our entire government policy around those complaints, the complaints of a few, the complaints of someone who lives better than you. They have as much business complaining as I do being called a socialist for thinking they have no reason to complain.
That’s true, they’ve gotten everything they want for so long anyone challenging them is seen as a pinko communist
Right on!
Right on dude