Friday, September 23, 2011

A quick thought on economics

Conservatives keep trying to claim that we can't increase taxes on rich people, because Obama shouldn't tax "job creators."

Can we have a moratorium on the use of the term "job creators" for rich people? Because, at the moment, they are verifiably not creating any fucking jobs. That's like calling somebody a "stamp collector" when they don't buy, sell, or keep any stamps. It's just stupid.

In fact, I'll go one step further. I'll support a tax cut for anybody who creates new jobs, in America, which are held by American citizens. Now, this has to be a net jobs increase - if you fire fifty thousand people, and then hire forty thousand, you don't get congratulated for creating forty thousand jobs - you get yelled at for losing ten thousand.

(Also, any jobs you ship overseas? Yeah, that counts as a job loss.)

And by the way, that whole idea that "lower taxes equal more jobs"? It's stupid. Reagan experienced job growth while he was in office. But only after he raised taxes. Three times.

So, can we have a little honesty up in this bitch? For once?

3 comments:

Murr Brewster said...

I remain amazed at the ability of people to believe almost anything if they've heard it enough. If someone started talking about job-killing gerbils they'd buy that too.

Nance said...

I like your plan very, very much. In fact, I think it's the only fair way to go about rewarding job creation. Since most larger corporations are sitting on record reserves of cash, they could, in fact, earn that tax credit.

On the other hand, if it's true that most jobs are created in the small business community and small businesses are having trouble getting credit, we need some incentives for those who extended the credit to the small businesses that actually demonstrated net job increases. Unless we already have some that I don't know about.

All of which sends me scurrying back to my research. Who knew I needed to be an economics expert?! Even the most earnest students among us are confused by those job-killing gerbils Murr mentions.

Nettie said...

Opera Unlimited recently hired not one, but two tenors and an accompanist. AND we fired no one. Of course, as a non-profit organization, we already get a tax break, and since all employees are actually contractors, there are no benefits, no insurance, no nothin'. So . . .nevermind.