Job Destroyers I

The US Chamber says Democratic Senators Sherrod Brown and John Tester are anti-employer, so, it will spend millions against their reelection.

Maybe Brown and Tester are pro-employee, i.e. for most of the people who vote, most of the people who live paycheck to paycheck. There's many, especially now, when wages have been stagnant for 30 years (yes, you read that right; since 1980, when Reagan brought the counter-revolution to the White House).

Sherrod Brown is reputed to be progressive; John Tester says he's a small Montana farmer, and I expect that neither claim he's a businessman. Oh yes, we want Senators who represent employers, says the Chamber.

Why can't employers see that they're killing their golden egg? If no one pays Americans enough for them to afford the "American Lifestyle," then it will go away; has gone away. Henry Ford's brilliant idea to pay workers enough so they could buy his cars, that's gone away even for Ford. CEOs cut jobs and get bonuses for doing so. Now, can't afford means can't afford to buy the goods businesses sell, not piling more on your credit card.

Actually, people did just that on Black Friday, apparently, but that can't go on: wages actually went down last month, and escalating personal debt is what got us into the Great Recession. Let me emphasize: it was personal debt as in mortgages, and the scams run by banks, not public debt. It's true, as conservatives argue, there were policies encouraging banks to lend to lower income people, who were necessarily higher risk. But the reasons for the policy were to promote equality, not a bad reason. However, the banks, in response, invented the sub-prime mortgage, and its very creation built into itself the logic for the financial implosion. Sub primes were inherently unstable, with low sucker introductory payments, and then balloons, or variable interest rates that suddenly escalated. They were also being tendered to people who likely couldn't make the payments unless everything went right.

Nevertheless, "the one percent" saw sub primes as a grand new market to exploit--until they needed Uncle to bail them out. Our equivalent of the Roman Senators of the fifth century, were grabbing more and more of the nation's wealth, with outsourcing and offshoring (destroying jobs, not creating them), so, it was less likely for the sub-primers that things would go right. Inevitably, the unstable market finally collapsed, and all its derivatives with it.

Republicans speak of the 1% as "job creators;" most are the opposite. Mitt Romney is a good example: while running Bain Capital, he oversaw corporate takeovers that stripped down companies, sold off parts, and jettisoned chunks of the workforce. He got rich by destroying jobs! Republicans are the true heirs of Goebbels: if you say black is white often enough people begin to believe it.

Yet, Democrats, said Cornel West last night, are "milquetoasts." Will our Roman Senators prevail with either party?

Comments welcomed.