Gordon Gekko Lives – Tom Rossi

I’ve been wondering lately (okay, for many, many years) how people can still hold onto conservative ideas about the economy. Social issues are one thing – there is a legitimate debate about abortion, for example, but for some people, economics seems to be even more of a religious issue than that. People just hold onto their beliefs, despite a wealth (pun intended) of evidence to the contrary.

To track down some of the reasoning of the followers of the tired, old religion of conventional, “free-market” economics, I interviewed démodé economist Charles “Chipmunk” Griedesgud at the Gordon Gecko Center for Economic Satire in Slashington D.C.

Presented here are some highlights of the interview. The entirety of the interview will be published in book form by the same publishers that put out Bill O’Reilly’s weekly treasures. It will be called, Killing… something or other.

Me: Thank you for allowing me to interview you, Mr. Griedesgud.

Griedesgud: Please, call me “Chip”.

Me: Fifth generation at Yale?

Chip: Exactly.

Later…

Me: Ha ha! I’m sure your cat didn’t see THAT coming! Oh… Ahem. The main thing I’ve been wondering about, Chip, is how people can still believe that giving corporations big tax breaks leads to more jobs. The corporations don’t seem to create jobs anymore; they just build factories overseas or buy robots to do the work. Don’t people know these things?

Chip: If we cut taxes on corporations, they will build factories and make jobs… in China and Mexico.

Me: How does that help us?

Chip: But then, you see, the Chinese and Mexican workers will become more affluent.

Me: Uh huh.

Chip: Meanwhile, American workers will accept lower and lower paying jobs…

Me: Waiting for the good part.

Chip: …which will eventually allow them to make the commodities that are demanded by the newly affluent foreign workers.

Me: Yeah. Great.

Chip: So, it still trickles down; it just might go through a couple of extra steps.

Me: Wow. I can’t understand how I never thought of that.

Chip: I sense a little sarcasm in your voice.

Me: Me? Nooooooo.

Chip: Would you, instead, have no job creation at all? I mean, if we balanced things more toward the mythical “middle class,” then there wouldn’t be the concentration of wealth at the top that it takes to start the projects and businesses that do just that.

Me: But isn’t that exactly what happened between the 1950’s and the 1970’s, America’s greatest period of economic growth and shared prosperity? The progressive tax structure taxed the super-wealthy and their corporations heavily, and they all kept right on growing anyway, along with the well-being of their workers and the workers’ families.

Chip: That approximately three-decade period was essentially an illusion of economic bliss. In reality, the so-called “middle class” was stealing from the providers – the wealthiest Americans, who could have built a much LARGER economy, and created even more jobs. They did this through forming alliances known as “unions” and through other underhanded methods.

Me: Those bastards!

Later…

Me: So, what could we expect if we were to follow your prescription, which seems to be the way we’re headed, anyway?

Chip: Well, economic growth and prosperity, of course! Our economy could be growing like the Chinese! And why not?

Me: Do you mean the Chinese economy, or the Chinese population?

Chip: Take your pick.

Me: But won’t this scenario mean that those countries make the same “mistakes”, as you call them, that we made? And won’t they be hurting their economies?

Chip: Yes! That’s exactly what we want! There are two ways to look at winning a competition – you can perform better than the others, or they can perform worse than you!

Later…

Me: So, you say we could head into a period of fantastic economic growth and prosperity. But the “middle class” can’t share in that prosperity, lest they sabotage the whole process.

Chip: That’s exactly right. You asked me about the benefits before: the average income would rise beyond anything we’ve seen.

Me: But wouldn’t that just be a result of the outliers? Wouldn’t the income median and mode be dismally low?

Chip: Well, thanks to years of effort, nobody knows what those even mean. We’ve trained people very effectively to think that averages are everything. We’ve kept telling them about the average income in America being so high and we even invented a term called “GDP per Person” that throws them way off. Complaining about your income just makes people feel ashamed now.

Me: Wow. Just… wow.

Later…

Me: Well, thank you, Mr. Griedesgud, for the interview. I suppose you’ll be going back to work for the rest of the day?

Chip: Work? What work? This story hasn’t changed since 1890! I’m going to dinner with some lobbyists at the “Oval Room”. I love a restaurant with a punny name!

-Tom Rossi

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Tom Rossi is a commentator on politics and social issues. He is a Ph.D. student in International Sustainable Development, concentrating in natural resource and economic policy. Tom greatly enjoys a hearty debate, especially over a hearty pint of Guinness.

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You Are Too Stupid – by Tom Rossi

Despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent, despite all the threats of terrorism and economic disaster, despite the cries of socialism, fascism, and even communism, you still re-elected Barrack Hussein Obama. For this reason, the Republican party has decided that what is needed is to simply take away your voting rights.

Ho hum, you say? “Wake up, Tom! Republicans have been trying to disenfranchise African-Americans, Hispanic Americans and other groups for years, if not centuries!” Well, yes… there is that. Let’s not go into a long history, but just give a quick review before we talk about the Republican party’s inspired new ideas (don’t you wish we had a convention on sarcasm in text, like it always appears in some ugly color, like baby-shit yellow?).

Republicans have sponsored and in many cases put through bills in almost every state requiring state-issued, photo IDs to be presented by voters. This may sound simple, but many voters (many of the poorest voters) face considerable difficulties in getting those IDs. Besides, actual voter fraud hardly exists. They have sent out letters to legal immigrants – naturalized citizens – that they and/or their families will be deported if they attempt to vote. They sent out letters claiming that people can vote by phone… the day after the election. Several Republican Secretaries of State have adjusted voting hours and polling-place personnel levels in order to cause hours-long waits to vote in poor or just Democratic-leaning precincts. My hands are getting tired from typing – so I hope you get the picture.

But now, ladies and gentlemen, comes the main event. An idea, a proposition, more evil than Scarpia, more conniving than Iago, more heartless than Dick Cheney… Because you, my friends, are just too stupid… too stupid to vote for who you’ve been instructed (at great effort, I might add), the power to choose your president will be taken away. Not completely, mind you. But just enough to tip the balance, and to make sure that there are no more Romney-style humiliations.

Here’s the ingenious plan: Even while most Americans want to do away with the electoral college and elect the president directly by popular vote, the Republican leadership in several key. “swing” states want to take the electoral college much further. They want to use the gerrymandered congressional districts, within their borders, to determine the winner of the state’s electoral votes.

If these rules had been in place before the 2012 election, Romney would have won the presidency, despite having lost the popular vote, 47% to Obama’s 51%, a difference of about 5 million votes.

The inescapable conclusion from all this is that the Republican party (I’m not talking about ALL Republican voters, but the party’s leadership) hates democracy. And while it’s true that the Democratic party also works to change the balance of who votes in America, they work to get more people to vote, not less. That actually (and obviously) increases democracy.

This picture may have been faked, but I think it captures some real sentiment out there.

To my many, many Republican readers out there, I ask: Will you sacrifice democracy in order to get your way? I sincerely believe that the answer will, from most, actual Republican voters, be “No!” You can’t love America and hate democracy. That would be the ultimate hypocrisy.

-Tom Rossi

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Tom Rossi is a commentator on politics and social issues. He is a Ph.D. student in International Sustainable Development, concentrating in natural resource and economic policy. Tom greatly enjoys a hearty debate, especially over a hearty pint of Guinness.

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