Throw Republican Darwinists Out of Congress

At Denny’s, for $11.83, I get a cheeseburger, fries, and iced tea, and the server calls me "Sir".

Fundamentally, it’s a commercial relationship. I pay money to the server’s employer, and she brings me food and treats me with respect.

Some relationships are mixed. My brother and I pay our secretary, and she keeps the office functioning smoothly. But I think there is friendship there, too. Maybe if she won the lottery, I would loose that illusion. I don’t think so, but it’s possible.

I wonder, were I to count, whether I have more commercial relationships on a daily basis than empathic ones.

Naturally, I value the empathic relationships more. Bonds can be broken, but I value more the people who love me than the people who pay me.

I think this is usual. Men and women sometimes go into the military for the benefits that come with it – education, training, and a chance for a better life. But if a soldier puts himself between danger and his fellows, he does it out of love, not for his salary.

But I wonder if this exaltation of love over money holds true across society. Is it true for the one percent, the very wealthy? They sit at the pinnacle of a pyramid of people, most of whom they might not know; they pay these people to labor to add to their wealth. Is there any relationships they would not give up to stay at the top of that pyramid?

And the Ayn Rand right finds more to admire in this than in supposedly silly altruism – like the self-sacrifice of, say, Jesus Christ. They would not say so, and many of them might not know it, but it seems to me that the right wing in America wants to exalt a Darwinian world of winners and losers over one based on compassion.

This is even reflected in the favored term: "Job Creator". This name is like a magic talisman that is waved before the supposedly greedy and weak, to defeat efforts by them to impose upon the Job Creators any tax for the comfort or benefit of the 99 percent.

"Job Creator", the term, shows the power that the possibility of these commercial relationships has upon modern minds. Never mind that if out of their abundance the one percent gave a little more to put the middle class to work, we would be the Job Creators. If that happened, more of us could earn and spend, and by that spending we could create jobs for others so that they, too, could earn and spend. And never mind that the Job Creators are not, in fact, creating new jobs. In their Darwinian, economic minds, the lack of demand destroys any incentive to invest.

Yet the myth of the right wing is that we should in fact cut the payments that these Job Creators owe to the general welfare of the nation. Then, so goes the myth, the Job Creators will be free to create commercial relationships with the rest of us, and they will blanket the nation with the benefit of their economic largesse in the form of unlimited commercial relationships. From the Job Creators will stretch mystic chords of money from top to bottom.

This is also known as trickle-down economics, re-incarnated for our time.

But it doesn’t work. Taxes are at historic lows, and the economy still struggles.

Historically, in times like these, government becomes the default job creator. When demand is low, government creates jobs.

There’s plenty of work that needs to be done. Our bridges, roads, airports, rails, and schools are crumbling. Paying contractors to fix these problems would boost our economy in the short term, and it would benefit the nation in the long term.

But if we don’t want to increase the long-term debt, the money to fund this infrastructure improvement has to come from tax increases.

Tax increases on the middle class would harm the recovery. The middle class really does spend money that it doesn’t pay in taxes. But the very, very rich – they are just banking money. Putting more money in their pockets just puts more money in their pockets.

Tax ‘em.

The Republicans in Congress fiercely protect the one percent. They do so with a vigor that they don’t feel for the middle class. Congressional Republicans were happy to increase taxes for the middle class until popular outcry made them turn around. That’s the benefit of electoral accountability. But nothing will make Congressional Republicans increase the contributions of their very rich patrons for the benefit of the middle class.

That’s why we need to vote them out of office. In the primaries, the present office-holders on the right need to be replaced with candidates of more centrist leanings. But if the Republican primary voters won’t supply centrist candidates for the general election, Republicans need to be replaced by Democrats. Because Democrats will impose a modest tax increase on the rich to benefit the middle class in these scraping times.

Aren’t most of us for that?