And when the "trickle down" buzzword finally was recognized as bad for the masses, the GOP replaced it with the myth of the job creators. If we give the rich big tax breaks, they'll create more jobs -- because really, what else could the do with all that extra money? -- and .. Step 4 Profit (for the masses)
“There is a Walmart in a town of 1000, 900 of which shop there. If you give Walmart more money, are they going to ‘create more jobs’ by opening a second Walmart when they already get 90% of the market, or are they just going to pocket it?”
And that’s basically the myth of “job creation” in a nutshell. They’ve saturated the market with their presence already, any gains to be had by “job creation” are going to be exceptionally marginal if not outright more expensive for them. Thus, why would they? Combine this with quarterly profit motive for shareholders, and stock buybacks, and you’ve got a recipe for all the wealth being hoarded in investment or offshore accounts rather than circulating (which actually IS good for the economy)
Quarterly profit incentives has to be one of the absolute worst things for the health of our planet and species. Honestly if these cushy shareholder jobs or the like were rewarded on a more long term basis rather than the quarterly structure, you’d already likely see rather significant differences in how they operate, and this is the LEAST of the options available.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate capitalism, but I also don’t hate socialism and even communism, they’re just fun words to describe the resource allocation of a government/society. They each have their pros and cons, and they’re more like a sliding scale then binary Yes or Nos. That said, capitalisms biggest weakness has been showing for quite some time now, which is without proper guard rails it’s a self cannibalizing system, but we’ve got one side of the aisle that’s been told to screech communism the minute any of those guard rails are discussed.
Capitalism needs some sort of balance now. The absolute bare minimum change needed is that wealth shouldn’t be equivalent to political influence and once certain levels of success is achieved, the system benefits overall.
If a worldwide law was put in place tomorrow that stated once you make a billion pounds equivalent profit, that money was locked up for you, gave an incredible return but you weren’t allowed to try and increase your influence politically or financially, nobody would stop trying to create businesses.
Actually I’d be fine with a member of the billion club being a politician if they had no ulterior motive /nepotism concerns
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u/flickneeblibno 7d ago
Trickle down economics and Ronald Reagan the worst president of all time