Via the Last Word, here is the embargoed TED speech that pointed out the bullshit spewing from our Galtian overlords:
I’m sure this gave heartburn to Matt Welch and the Fonzi of Freedom, but no doubt they will ignore everything he said.
Right Said TED
This post is in: Free Markets Solve Everything, Glibertarianism
Villago Delenda Est
You know John, they have to ignore Adam Smith as well.
Oh, wait…they’ve been doing that for decades. Never mind.
David Koch
Cubs have been cursed for another 100 years
Stuck in the Funhouse
Libertarian hissy fits are some of the most entertaining on the grid. I figure Balko will have you queued up for a round of Malkin grade whinging his blog nemesis.
HelpThe99ers
Hanauer has been making his point about the real job creators for some time now.
From his December ’11 op-ed in BusinessWeek:
MikeJ
@HelpThe99ers:
What’s funny is that the people defending Rmoney said exactly the same thing this week. Rmoney’s job at Bain was not creating jobs, his job was to make money for the shareholders.
Pity Romney won’t own up to it.
Jennifer
The simple pushback for this “job creators” BS is to reply, whenever it gets thrown out there, that demand is what creates jobs, and demand is what you don’t have when 5% of the population is hoarding 75% of the wealth.
The Dangerman
This video reminded me … Romney hasn’t had to answer for his appallingly low tax rate since he’s taken the nomination. Yet.
Hill Dweller
@MikeJ:
That is actually true; their only goal was extracting as much money as possible before sending the company on its way. However, Willard is going around the country saying his goal was creating jobs, and his business experience makes him uniquely qualified to run the country.
The Obama campaign would be committing political malpractice by not destroying his bullshit “job creation” claims.
Violet
Maybe this TED talk brouhaha will be a good thing in the end. I’m a lot more aware of this talk and the points Hanauer was making than I would have been if the talk had just been made available without comment. Maybe there are others like me.
FlipYrWhig
@Jennifer: That’s what this video is about. And it has the virtue of being spoken by a rich guy who can’t be accused of envying success.
jl
Awesome talk. Thanks posting it, Mr. Cole.
MIkeInSewickley
This is absolutely the finest, most succinct rebuttal I have ever encountered that shows the lie in all the complete horseshit being spewed and accepted as faith by nearly all Republicans and by a number of Democrats as well.
Our country is well and truly fucked as it is pretty much a given that the ultra rich know they have sucked the marrow from the bones of this country and are now globalists willing to move on and leave this country broken and 2nd tier.
I really fear for the future of my children as I just don’t know what can be done to turn this around short of civil war.
I don’t want it to come to that but if someone can tell me how by electing as many honest, caring as we can to go into the bubble that is Washington DC is going to change this without grassroots action in every corner of America, I would be overjoyed to listen.
MikeInSewickley
Sorry everyone. I didn’t mean to double post – I got a connection error.
I know my comments are not worth being said twice…no matter what I may think :-)
hhex65
Obviously we need to ban the teaching of Heliocentrism in American schools.
Suffern ACE
@Hill Dweller: Yep. Private equity is not venture capital. Very little is actually risked. The reason Romney is going to have to pivot from “job creator” is that if you added up all the jobs lost by his firm taking over the companies, saddling them with debt and paying themselves from the revenue stream, that will more than offset those few times Bain has decided to take over the company and create a bigger company.
Birthmarker
But Rand Paul says we all either work for rich people or sell stuff to rich people.
West of the Cascades
Mr. Hanauer can haz a PAC to pound Mitt Romney with this message??
Chris
@MIkeInSewickley:
Making it doubly ironic that for all these years they’ve been funding the people who peddle conspiracy theories about Socialist One-Worlder UN plots to destroy all national sovereignty.
Yutsano
@Hill Dweller: Better to get Willard on the record as fully backing his tenure at Bain, then let the stories drip out one by one. There are just as many places where a business bought by Bain didn’t close but it was shelled, salaries were slashed, and health insurance was either decimated or eliminated. But the company still exists, a tattered shadow of itself. That is what Willard wants for all of us. Get him fully on record saying that.
Petorado
Hanauer makes the obvious point that upward income redistribution doesn’t make economic sense. So why is it getting done? Power. Hanauer strikes an important chord about deification of the rich — if we the rich are no longer mere mortals, they don’t have to play by our rules. And that’s why we’re dealing with this new assholigarchy of guys like Romney, Trump, Ricketts, Dimon, et al, running around believing they can do whatever they want and the rest of us can suck. on. this.
satanicpanic
The libertarians are afraid of this? I was expecting at least some call for Marxist revolution or something.
kwAwk
Wow!
elaine benes
Business owner here and I completely concur with this guy.
Cutting my business taxes has zero relationship to hiring additional employees….I’ll just take more profit (or, more likely, funnel that money into paying my existing employee’s ever-increasing health insurance premiums).
I hire employees when consumer demand increases for the products we design and produce. Consumer demand increases when the middle and lower classes have more disposable income.
Period, end of story.
Regrettably, wingnuts aquaintances seem to have a congenital inability to understand this simple concept.
slag
I’m glad that this talk is getting a little play. I watched the O’Donnell clip on the topic, and O’Donnell is right, the best thing about this talk is its clarity and succinctness. Hanauer used analogy to great effect here.
And I just saw this rationale from Chris Anderson on why TED wouldn’t post the video:
I find this interesting since, like Hanauer, I hear very few people of either party making the argument he made. Even though we keep hearing how obvious the argument is, no major voice in DC is making it! And yet this dude claims it comes down firmly on the side of “one party”. Sure, everybody–from both parties–are pandering to the middle class. But is anyone in politics calling them the true job creators? This seems like a huge disconnect.
slag
@Petorado:
Me likes!
Also, hard not to enjoy the Trump-squirrel analogy. It all makes sense now.
middlewest
Huh, I never saw the theological implications of job CREATOR before, but it’s embarrassingly obvious. They really think they are gods.
amk
3,2,1 – pox news dittoheads start tearing down this guy.
Hill Dweller
@slag: This is the sort of ‘balance’ that enables the right wing to get away with their vile policies. The veracity of Hanauer’s comments is irrelevant. They won’t release it because it might offend the Republicans and/or look partisan.
Exurban Mom
The “curator” of TED is saying he didn’t want to publish the talk because it’s too political.
I didn’t once hear either the word “Democrat” or “Republican” in the talk. He is discussing economic principles, held by some in both parties. Since when is TED not a place where economic principles can be discussed and debated???? I’m quite disappointed in TED. I use TED materials in my classes quite frequently. I might have to rethink that now…
Petorado
@slag:
Hanauer made three great points:
– That feeding more money to the rich is the zenith of the Republican totem of voodoo economics and is ultimately bad for business and society.
– He took the side of advancements of knowledge over the conservative fashion of being anti-science/ education.
– He brought up the subject of the negative power of religious imagery against the talking points of a party that wields religion as a weapon. (This had me recognizing how “Luntz-ified” a the term “job creator” is.)
Is the talk political? Ultimately, yes. But it is also obviously the truth, and TED seems to fear that in an election year.
slag
@Hill Dweller: The entirety of reality offends the Republicans and/or looks partisan. This is not the fault of reality and so reality should not be kept in the closet out of concern for Republican intolerance of it.
Steve in DC
we should form a Diablo group,
That said, umm the reason kids are more about civil liberties and willing to go along with economic bullshit to get there. That’s unlike the current DNC, let’s face it, democrats have sucked on ecomomic issues since they went socially liberal.
This is a CHOICE. If you are socially liberal, you must go with Wall Street and fuck the rest. If you are an economic populist you must accept some social set backs.
You can’t pick and chose, and if you try to, you are fucking the poor. A socially liberal progressive is just as bad for economic justice as the sainted “by the HRC” Goldman Sachs.
Learn your enemies.
elm
One presumes that TED attendees don’t drop $6000 on a ticket to hear that they’re not special. Won’t somebody think of their feelings?
PeakVT
Speaking of jawb creyatorz: a letter from Mark Zuckerberg.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Exurban Mom
It’s fine to discuss economic principles at TED, as long as you place the rich at the center of universe. Placing the middle class at the center of the universe is heresy and worse, it hurts rich people’s fee fees.
Redshift
@elaine benes: Yup. My short version is this: In business, jobs are an expense, not a product. Anyone who tells you that business owners will create more jobs if we let them have more money either has no idea how business works or is lying to you.
slag
@Petorado:
Totally. We were just talking about that at dinner after my dinner companion used the term without even thinking about it. Language is a slippery thing. I’m glad Hanauer illuminated the implications of that term in his talk. That was big.
elm
@Shawn in ShowMe: It’s also acceptable to discuss inequality if you act like the presenters in today’s TED blog post. It’s titled Playlist: The roots — and effects — of income equality. It has 4 totebagger-friendly videos that studiously avoid discussing the roots of income inequality.
It’s unacceptable to talk about meaningful ways to change things. Just describe how bad things are, so the rich folks in the audience can tut-tut about how awful it all is and mutter about how nice it would be if things were otherwise and then go have a nice champagne and caviar reception.
Spolier to the videos: Being poor sucks and they should garden more.
piratedan
@elaine benes: but… but… The Chamber of Commerce people say Republicans are good for businesses…..
I know Elaine, if only you could get them to see and understand. My Brother-In-Law is wrapped up in still believing that R’s are good for business, because, just shut up, I said so.
slag
@Steve in DC:
Look. I’m sorry your mother dropped you on your head when you were young, but really…that’s no reason to relegate her to second-class citizen status. Forgive and forget. You’ll feel better about yourself in the morning.
Redshift
@slag: Pretty odd, if you think about it, since there are TED talks on climate change and various other issues where there is a large public policy role and which the right wing has made into contentious partisan issues. Gee, I wonder why it is that it’s okay to have a talk about how there are people publicly lying about climate change, but it’s not okay to have a talk about how there are people lying about economics and taxes…
piratedan
@Redshift: In this information age, sometimes the product is actually people. I’m on hire as a contractor because of the knowledge that I have from working with a specific software application. I am very much “the product” in this scenario as I am being used as a support and training resource. One problem that is facing our country is that for the last 30 years businesses have shipping jobs out of the country when we used to make everything here. We don’t “Make” as many things as we used to and it’s hard to reinvent that kind of expertise unless you’re committed to do so.
Shawn in ShowMe
@elm:
@Redshift:
Totebagger Credo: “How dare you question my commitment to equality? Some of my best friends are poor!”
slag
@Redshift:
Hmmm….This incident actually reminds me of Stephen Colbert’s White House Correspondence Dinner talk, which, as we know, was just a little too honest. And yet totally in character. You have to wonder why either the WHCA or TED would invite these people to their events. No one could have predicted!
Redshift
@piratedan: Yes, skilled labor can be the product, but jobs aren’t the product. Those are two separate things. (Your other points are well taken, though.)
elm
@Redshift: Additionally, Michelle Rhee’s talk about gutting public education was sufficiently non-political to be included on a TED site.
Odie Hugh Manatee
The wealthy treat our economy like a game of Monopoly but forget that at the end of the game the winner gives everything back to the bank, then they either start a new game or put it away. Our economy is not a game and there has to be some kind of checks in place to prevent the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. It’s in the best interests of the government (and nation) to keep the economy strong. Paying outsized bonuses to the suits for improved worker productivity is robbing the people who are being more productive. The rich are flush with cash, the banks are awash with the cash from the rich, so much in fact that they can’t find anything to invest it in because what little money there is left is sluggishly moving around in what’s left of the economy.
A strong economy has a strong middle class that drives economic activity. Business can’t sell shit unless people have the money to buy it. As this guy said, he may make a thousand times what the average person does but he doesn’t spend like a thousand people would. The wealthy are sacrificing our economy just to get more money that they won’t spend in said economy.
They can’t see that this will end disastrously for everyone and it’s the fault of our government and courts for letting this happen. They should be acting as the checks to maintain balance but instead they sold us out for personal gain and prestige.
Depressing.
chrismealy
Hanauer was a good guy but when Washington state dems didn’t go along with his charter school agenda he started supporting our local Scott Walker clone. Nobody should trust rich dudes.
Jebediah
Further proof of rich people fucking up the world, with apologies if it is old news (I just saw it on the boingboing) – dental practices being backed by hedge funds, who then demand that the dentists meet quotas. How are they meeting the quotas? Doing unnecessary, unwanted dental work on schoolchildren. Fucking horrifying story.
karen marie
@MIkeInSewickley: Here here.
Steve in DC
@slag
I’m not the HRC, though they work close to us, but they are the ones that gave a “they do better” pass to Goldman Sachs and made them their corporate sponsor. If you can’t get past that, it’s on you.
But till we shatter social liberalism from economic justice, economic justice remains a lost cause. As social liberals will use neo liberals like Sachs and JPChase “I am a democrat” to advance social liberalism and then pay their masters back when they stab the poor in the back.
It’s one or the other PICK YOUR SIDE. It’s economics or social issues, which one for you?
patrick II
@slag:
Does Mr. Anderson also suggest that TED should not allow any lectures on Global Climate change because understanding climate change is the political position of only one party in an election year?
Are there any other areas of thought TED shouldn’t explore because republicans feelings might get hurt? Perhaps Mr. Anderson agrees with Senator Tom Coburn’s reluctance to fund social science studies since they too illuminate facts republicans don’t want to hear.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Steve in DC:
No thanks, I suspect you’d ninja everything.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@elaine benes: Working stiff here and I agree. My company won’t stop shrinking until demand increases. In our case, an engineering firm, we need more funding from state and local governments to build the infrastructure we design.
So what’s the one sector of the economy still shedding jobs and revenue?
jwb
@Steve in DC: It’s not a zero-sum game. Nevertheless, there’s an old game that academics are fond of playing in question time of papers. It’s called: race, class, gender. The point of the game—the reason academics enjoy playing it—is that the interrelationships among these variable is extraordinarily complex, often unpredictable, and it is almost impossible to produce a coherent account that adequately accounts for all three; but excluding any of those variables necessarily results in reductive and unacceptably distorted analysis.
asiangrrlMN
I saw the statement by TED before I actually watched the video (which I just did). This is too political and too partisan? Very interesting concept of political – and he mentions Republicans and Democrats once each. He’s not exactly praising either when he does mention them. TED guy shares Hanauer’s disgust at inequality but just wishes Hanauer had not been so damn honest about the cause of it!
The speech isn’t great, but it makes valid points that ought to be heard – especially the part about job creators not living up to that moniker.
Jamey
We need a billionaire to tell us what we already know, that economics basically boils down to demand? Apparently so.
slag
@chrismealy: That’s interesting. I did not know Hanauer was a charter school freak. Disappointing. Are wealthy people more apt than the non-wealthy to venture out of their realm of expertise, or do they just have more opportunity to demonstrate their ignorance to the broader public? Maybe even liberal wealthy folks could do with a few more constraints.
elaine benes
@piratedan:
@Redshift:
Yes. Wingnuts apparently want me to hire people to stand around and twiddle their thumbs. Or something. They always get vague and change the subject at that point to birf certificates or somesuch.
And when I try to explain to them the REAL job-killer – employer-based, for-profit health insurance – they stick their fingers in their ears and “LALALALA” me.
elaine benes
@piratedan:
@Redshift:
Yes. Wingnuts apparently want me to hire people to stand around and twiddle their thumbs. Or something. They always get vague and change the subject at that point to birf certificates or somesuch.
And when I try to explain to them the REAL job-killer – employer-based, for-profit health insurance – they stick their fingers in their ears and “LALALALA” me.
eugene v debs
@elm:
bingo.
I just went to TEDMED on a “scholarship”, and i was pretty stunned by the opulence of the whole thing. I’m from humble beginnings, but i thought i had seen the sort of stuff rich people get into. this was a whole other world though.
then again, if couched in the right way, you can do a lot of good. Bryan Stevenson spoke at both TED 2012 and TEDMED 2012. apparently, after the main TED conference, the organizers took it upon themselves to do some fundraising and pulled a little over a million in 48 hours just from big checks.
http://blog.ted.com/2012/03/01/all-of-our-survival-is-tied-to-the-survival-of-everyone-bryan-stevenson-at-ted2012/
and the video is not insignificant:
http://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_about_an_injustice.html
like everything, it’s a double edged sword. i know that i was inspired to try and put together a nonprofit based on addressing issues i find important because of this. i also know you catch more flies with honey etc, and that’s why i know i could never be a frontman for such an organization.
because rich people have delicate fee-fees. krugman had it spot on.
elaine benes
@chrismealy: Any relation to Chip Hanauer, the hydro driver?
RadioOne
Two things TED would never censor: Cisco systems and the New Pornographers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBAUQaj6EJo
The prophet Nostradumbass
That guy’s talk: Hammer square on nail.
James E Powell
I think the talk is fine for how short it was. But the story could be and should be told in about a ten minute video with specific examples.
The one point that needs to be hammered, with repeated illustrations from recent history, is that this policy has been advocated by Republicans since 1980 and it has never produce the results that were promised.
In contrast, federal government spending on large public works projects (e.g., the interstate highway system) produced a very large number of big fat paychecks.
opie jeanne
John Cole, could you please email me? I really need to talk to you about something.
I think you can see my email address but if not, it’s [email protected]
Thank you.
JGabriel
@opie jeanne: John might not ever see your post. You might be better off e-mailing him yourself. The address is in the upper right corner, in the Contact list — it’s the right side box under the Recent Posts box.
.
JGabriel
@RadioOne: Love that song, R1.
opie jeanne
@JGabriel: Thanks, that’s a smarter option anyway since it’s me who wants to tell him a story. :-)
It was the comment at the bottom of his post that jogged my memory.
JGabriel
@Steve in DC:
Say what?
There are different points where one can argue that the Dems went socially liberal — under FDR, or when Truman integrated the army, or when JFK and LBJ started pushing for civil rights recognition.
None of them coincide with when Democrats started to suck on economic issues — that was when Clinton came into office as a DLC / Third Way centrist. And even so, they’re still leagues and miles ahead of the GOP economically.
.
drunken hausfrau
I’d like to buy this guy a drink!! What a great message. What are the odds that it will spread? Are there more like him? Can we clone him?
don
For the sake of completeness, here’s another side of the issue from one of the TED editors. The comments are interesting.
http://tedchris.posterous.com/131417405
TheMightyTrowel
@don: …which is a totally different rational than he gave the speaker in the email reprinted by NJ.
Also, OT, WTF Michigan. What a shitstorm.
Raven
Mika and Halperin don’t think the Ricketts story is fair to Ricketts.
Uncle Cosmo
@Petorado: Assholigarchy. I am soooo stealing that!
Uncle Cosmo
@elaine benes: And when demand does increase, the first reaction of your typical business owner is to increase employees’ hours worked per week: Paying current hourly staff straight time for overtime is cheaper than hiring new workers who need to be trained & provided benefits (to the extent any benefits at all are provided)–& forcing “exempt” staff to work extra hours costs nothing at all.
Just reinstating rules regarding time and a half or double time for overtime & re-restricting the reclassification of workers as “exempt” would do major good in the service of job creation. (Hey, I can dream, can’t I?)
Mino
@Yutsano: It would be useful to connect Bain’s behavior to that of Michigan’s emergency managers who have brought vulture capitalism to state government.
Mino
@Uncle Cosmo: Notice you are not hearing any such proposals from Dems? And haven’t for a generation.
JPL
@Raven: Are they upset with Rahm for not speaking to the family about the 100 million they want for their ballpark renovation?
Mino
@Raven: They should be five feet underground with the spin they’ve had to use this morning. Even the daughter says it was in line with her father to do such a thing.
Mika says it’s all just too, too complicated.
Mino
@JPL: I suspect the Cubs are having a bad, no good day.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Uncle Cosmo:
Some businesses hire part-timers that they use for this purpose. They have little to no benefits and work when their bosses call them in for extra hours. Why hire more people when you can have a bunch of part-timers who cost much less? Another trick is training people for other positions as temps to be called up as needed and then don’t pay them the differential they would get if they actually held that position. My wife’s employer has been pulling that one for years now.
Randy P
Actually, Forbes tells me that the talk was only censored because it’s bad science or something. And Forbes speaks for billionaires and they have a lot of money. So there.
Elizabelle
@Raven:
Yeah, I saw Mika and Dan Senor this morning, giving cover to Ricketts.
Corporate tools.
Last night, the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams identified Ricketts as a member of the family that owns the Chicago Cubs.
Seven syllables not in the piece, at all:
TD Ameritrade.
NBC never mentioned it.
Whorish.
Soonergrunt
@Jamey: No. WE don’t. But a lot of others do.
MikeInSewickley
@Exurban Mom: Same here. I use TED for the technical videos.
After hearing about this, I need to ask if TED is allowing videos that only profit start-ups and VCs?
Personally, I don’t believe that but now it will nag at me every time I use a TED video.
Soonergrunt
@Yutsano: Glad to see you back around. How’d the surgery go?
MikeInSewickley
My God!
When I watched this last night, the view count was 303.
Right now it is over 153,000.
Warms the cockles of my heart.
Chyron HR
@JGabriel:
Steve in DC’s political philosophy is that only people like Newt Gingrich (who he specifically name-checked) are willing to fight for ecoonomic populism, and that America will never elect such august personages as long as women and minorities keep voting for their own “civil liberties” instead.
sherparick
TD Ameritrade is a major sponsor. Comcast owns NBC Universal. GE is the former owner and is still a minority shareholder. Hence, even on the “liberal” MSNBC if we get stories on Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, it will only be in relationship to the evil “deficit” and how they have to be cut while the tax system has to be “reformed and flatten” so that corporations and capital will pay less then the already low taxes they pay.
Meanwhile, the Ricketts are not the only right-wing types that won’t let their principals get in the way of sucking at the public trough. http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2012/05/schilling
bjacques
@TheMightyTrowel: They wouldn’t have had that problem if they’d gone with Helvetica. The emergency decree must have been sent out in Comic Sans.
don
@TheMightyTrowel: I hadn’t read that, thank you. It does appear that there is some waffling going on, or dare I say that Chris Anderson may have a little Rmoney in his soul?
Lee
Interesting that the TED audience gave the guy a standing ovation.
But according to balloon-juice isn’t TED supposed to be full of rightwing glibertarians?
Concerned Citizen
Jesus, the first thing I read this morning is about swallowing Koch choad. Ugh.
Maude
@Concerned Citizen:
It’s a diet plan.
RalfW
@satanicpanic:
No shit. You realize how frightened and how vulnerable the libertarians must feel if this was “too political” for TED. The video is out now, but not via TED, so that just points out how timid and shitty TED can be.
We’re not in Komen territory here, but for my eyeball time, I’m a lot more leery of TED talks going forward.
Who are they not inviting? Who are they afraid will say “the emperor’s new clothes have a vague translucence that you might notice on really sunny days?”
Unsympathetic
TED + Politifact = win
...now I try to be amused
@slag:
I’m guessing it’s the latter. Wealthy people can buy politicians, think tanks, and advertising, but the average joe know-it-all is limited to the ballot box, the bar, and the Internet.
RalfW
@Steve in DC:
I read your word salads. I’m not getting it.
Because one LGBT org rates Goldman Sachs a good place for gay people to work, social liberalism is horribly, utterly tainted and cannot work because of it’s ties to Wall Street?
That’s your thesis?
Really?
RalfW
@James E Powell:
This is why under Bush, deficits didn’t matter. But under Obama, they’re the clear and present danger.
Republicans know that government spending creates jobs. Which is why they resist it so aggressively. It’s all to the aim of Jimmy Cartering the black Democrat in office.
If (shudder) Romney wins, deficits will be under control within weeks (as in, they’ll cook the numbers/downplay/change the subject), and huge new government spending – for things like road building that hire private contractors, of course, not civil service jobs – will be rammed thru in the lame duck session.
That way they can paint Obama as the spender, then get the job bump next summer and praise the mighty Bainster.
amk
@don:
@TheMightyTrowel:
This chris anderson guy emails
I launched numerous magazines for each of which, at time of their
launch, there was zero consumer demand. In each of those cases I hired
teams before launching and before knowing whether anyone would buy. Businesses do this all the time.
Weird point from this guy. How could him or anyone else for that matter could have sustained that business without any consumers ? He may be right that entrepreneurs hire people before they sell their products/ideas/whatever without zero consumer base. But isn’t the very foundation of such businesses to find and sell to consumers ? So no consumers, no business. For that matter, no apple either. That was the point of Hanauer.
MomSense
@petorado
“Assholigarchy” Brilliant!!!
After 30 years of let them eat cakenomics we end up with assholigarchy!
Ben Cisco
Nick, And TED’s Bogus Journey | My Ready Room
[…] The good: Nick Hanauer gave a talk that plainly explains why the right’s “Job Creators!” doctrine is so utterly full of FAIL: […]
becca
@Elizabelle: I suggest watching Stephanie Miller on Current TV in the morning.
Politics and fart jokes go together surprisingly well.
Mnemosyne
@amk:
I call bullshit on that one — someone launches a business with no idea whether or not there’s a market for that product? We’re not talking about publishing your little one-man fanzine about Vincent Price or something. I’m pretty sure that banks aren’t going to give you a loan if you walk in and say, “Well, I don’t know if anyone will buy this, but you should loan me the money to start up the company anyway.”
Frankensteinbeck
@Chyron HR:
Eh? Has he ever specifically mentioned Gingrich or any other conservative? That would certainly put the icing on the cake of his strange ‘some bankers support gay marriage, therefor socially liberal causes are inevitably tied to giving the rich whatever they want’ theory.
amk
@Mnemosyne: Even if he puts up his own money, what’s he gonna do once it is started up ? Just sit there in his office twiddling his thumbs ?
It was a stupid point he was trying to make about the ‘job creators’.
Jennifer
Steve in DC mistakes effect for cause, I think.
To explain, go back to LBJ and both the Civil Rights Act and War on Poverty/Great Society. The first doomed the second, in this regard: LBJ knew that passage of CRA would lose a large section of the country for the Democrats for at least a generation, and of course he was right. That spelled doom for his other initiatives – first because a lot of those in poverty were the same folks helped by the CRA, and secondly, because any intitiative associated with LBJ/the Democrats was tainted in the eyes of the segregationists because of LBJ’s support of CRA. So come 1968, there’s a Republican president. Then in 1972, he’s elected again, against the last truly liberal nominee of the Democratic Party we’ve had. They would have won again in ’76 if not for Watergate, Ford’s pardon of Nixon, and the Democrats nominating a candidate from the south, which by that point was their only hope of picking up votes there. Reagan wins in 1980 and ushers in a still-ongoing era of Republican dominance, funded by billionaires, millionaires & big business – coupled with the destruction of the unions, they cut the financial legs out from under the Democrats. So by 1990, we’ve got the “New Democrats” – hey, we’re business-friendly, too! – which was the Democratic Party’s ploy to raise enough money to remain even slightly competitive with the Republicans. The only problem is the strings that came on that money – to keep the checkbooks open, New Democrats had to curry the favor of wealthy business interests, and there’s no way that could happen but to the detriment of ordinary working folks.
Meanwhile, the GOP has used social issues as a cudgel to distract those same working folks from the fact that GOP policies have screwed them out of the middle class. So while Democrats were abandoning their support for economic policies favorable to working people, they were also backpedaling on social issues to try to avoid further inflaming opposition. It seems the New Democrats made a calculation that it was better to have a funded party which stood for not much of anything, than to have an unfunded party fighting hard for the interests of ordinary people, which was a tragic mistake and one that I think most Democrats now recognize as such; had they remained firm on economic fairness a lot of those folks they lost on social issues might have stuck around.
In short, it’s not impossible to walk and chew gum. As we saw with Obama’s campaign in 2008, it is possible to fund a campaign with millions of smaller donations; back in 1990 before online fundraising it wasn’t so easy. But on the other hand, back in 1990, the system wasn’t nearly as awash with corporate cash and with the federal matching funds, it was not impossible to fund a race without major Wall Street backing & etc. Just because the historical trajectory to date has been that economic & social justice issues haven’t shared equal time in Democratic politics, doesn’t mean that they can’t or more importantly, that such a combination wouldn’t result in Democratic dominance. My take is we’re coming around to a point where enough people are fed up over enough different issues that we might start to see some marriage of support for both economic & social justice not only in the Democratic base, but in the larger society as well. In fact, polling suggests that this may be exactly what is happening – over 70% are already on the economic justice bandwagon w/r/t raising tax rates on the people who own everything while over 50% are pro-choice, approve of legalizing same-sex marriage, now 50% approve of legalizing marijuana – there’s a whole host of issues out there where the public is broadly aligned in their attitudes about not only economic fairness, but social issues as well.
So I wouldn’t for a moment accept that we have to choose between economic and social justice issues. The two are intertwined, and it’s doubtful the Republicans could have done as much damage as they have over the past generation if that were not true.
Elizabelle
@becca:
Thank you. Don’t get “Current”, but probably should.
Morning Ho only on when I fall asleep with MSNBC “sanity hour (Maddow, Shultz, O’Donnell)” reruns on overnight.
bcinaz
There is no definitive set of facts or data, no statistic, no testimony, no evidence that will knock a Winger off this religious belief that rich people through no known mechanism create jobs.
The decline and fall is baked into this tax Cut/job creator theory.
Uncle Cosmo
@Odie Hugh Manatee: This too; thanks for pointing it out.
Back in the day (whenever that was) there was a (small) bit of rationale in businesses hiring temps & workers signing on with temp agencies. It allowed the firm to downsize staff when contracts slacked off without outright dismissals.* And the worker got to showcase her/his abilities in hopes of being hired fulltime by the customer (which happened to a number of friends BITD). Alas, that day is long gone…
– – – – –
* In the early 80s I interviewed with a defense contractor that was the largest private employer in MD. My cousin, an EE who’d been there for 15 years, told me that ever since the early 70s they only offered positions to those they planned on keeping till retirement–they’d staffed up then anticipating a contract they’d lost & the resulting mass layoffs left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. (FTR “till retirement” turned out to be 8.5 years, when DoD abruptly cancelled a bigbux contract on which they were a major sub [& doing for once an outstanding job, nothing I worked on FTR] & I hit the pavement along with 1,300 [former] coworkers. That began the rapid decline of the company as a hi-tek player, which BTW, FTR, & FWIW gave many Marylanders an additional pre-Ravenite reason [as if the 1971 & 1979 World Series weren’t enough] to despise the city that skulks by the Three Sewers, since that’s where it was HQ’d.)
Howlin Wolfe
@Petorado: Assholigarchy! Wins the internetses today!
Uncle Cosmo
@Jennifer: Nicely put.
I wonder how far the whoring-for-corporate-$$ goes in explaining why the DNC won’t send a dime to the Wisconsin recall folks?
Uncle Cosmo
@amk: Starting a business without a pretty fair idea of how it’s going to make a profit (or furnish a tax advantage greater than its cost) fits Sam Johnson’s characterization of second marriage: “the triumph of hope over experience.” And a short-lived triumph at that. The occasional brazillionaire-supported corporate potlatch is the exception that proves the rule.
Uncle Cosmo
@MomSense: Honorable mention to “let-’em-eat-cakeonomics”. Any other day that would’ve won the Toobz for the duration…
Jimo
Sorry, but I was under the impression that there was something controversial about this video.
There’s nothing here but obvious common sense.
What gives?