Tax Breaks For "Job Creators"

Many Americans, concerned that essential programs will be cut to reduce the deficit, reasonably expect that America's wealthiest citizens and corporations be taxed at a higher rate, and contribute a more equitable share to the common good of the country.  Under such extraordinary economic circumstances as we see today, tax breaks that were extended to the wealthy, under former President George W. Bush, should be rescinded. 

The  monetary amounts raised by this requirement would help the country's financial health, and would hardly be felt as a dent in the pocketbooks of these enormously wealthy citizens and corporations

Yet, in an effort to block this reasonable requirement, many political figures, most of them among the country's wealthiest citizens, fight tooth and nail against this idea, stating that it is bad policy in a weak economy to tax "job creators".

The term "job creators" is rarely debated or questioned, neither in Congress nor in the White House.  But it is such a bald-faced misdirection that it cries out for immediate scrutiny from intelligent journalists, concerned citizens, and political leaders.  The protection given "job creators" should be a leading topic on the news, covered relentlessly.  So-called "job creators" should be made to justify the misleading title they seem to embrace.  I wondered why this concept was rarely challenged over the airwaves.

Based on a large number of writers in the blogosphere addressing this topic, I am not alone, which was a comfort, albeit a small one.

The lack of calling-out of these "job creators", who are getting rich on the backs of a dwindling workforce, is especially irksome in light of the recent bleak U.S. employment news, and the discouraging haggle over Mr. Obama's upcoming speech  to address the jobs crisis (as though either the Republican presidential debate, or the season premiere of the National Football League, were the ONLY two nights available to discuss a topic that should have been done two years ago--or whether these two competing events should have had any bearing on this address in the first place).

By the way, Mr. Obama acquiesced to the Republicans and their Presidential debate, and will now compete with a season-opener football game.  Bad judgement on the President's part; unnerving, almost laughable disrespect from the Republicans.  All political theater, on every side.  No matter.  My instinct suggests that a majority of football fans would not have tuned in to the speech, nor supported Obama's plan, no matter when the speech was scheduled to be given.  

Lila Shapiro's Huffington Post article on Friday, September 2, nicely summarized the alarming news that continues to bode ill for our economic recovery. Americans, meanwhile, remain either too scared or too complacent to take to the streets, preferring instead to retreat to their football games, or to their paternalistic Republican despots (who they naively think represent them), or to the two or three jobs (if they can find work at all) they must work to make ends meet:

The number of those out of a job for six months or more remained above 6.0 million in August and accounted for 42.9 percent of the unemployed. A total of 2.04 million were out of work for 99 weeks -- the limit for jobless benefits in some states -- or longer, a slight rise from 2.01 million last month, according to BLS figures not in the report.

"Their horizon for a brighter day is moving away from them," said Carl E. Van Horn, a labor economist at Rutgers University and co-author of a recent report focusing on the long-term unemployed. "Their optimism has been crushed by reality: They are still not working, or if they are working they're making a lot less money. You're either devastated or you're hurting, that's the range."

Meanwhile, corporate profits remain at pre-recession levels of strength. Many experts say that robust corporate profits alongside stagnant wages and declining workweeks points to a grim future for America's workforce.

"Many companies have simply come to the conclusion that labor is just too expensive," said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at The Economic Outlook Group. "We are moving increasingly into a labor-less society."

Perhaps there should be a requirement that tax breaks be extended to those who can demonstrate that they have created new American jobs each year, for Americans on American soil, whether they be a wealthy individuals, corporations, or small entrepreneurs who nevertheless have successfully grown to the need to hire workers.  Make it a simple process to account for added jobs; make loopholes difficult to create, or easy to dispense with.

Every one else on the highest end of society would have to ante up.