(walknboston / Flickr)
(walknboston / Flickr)
Except when it comes to taxing the well-to-do and filthy rich. GOP lawmakers argue that millionaires are the economy's job creators, and if they're not making money, they won't create any jobs.
A reasonable argument, except for the fact that they're making money already. And where are those jobs? CEO pay at large companies soared 27 percent last year. Profits are up too. Bankers, hedge fund managers, and stock brokers are raking it in. Things are so good for the richest of the rich that sales of mansions costing $20 million or more are up in the Los Angeles area. The stock market performed well in the first half of the year too.
Where are the jobs? Why aren't these sultans of finance and industry hiring people, lending money, and doing something for the economy?
I don't know, maybe they're too busy shopping for $20 million mansions.
I do know this. My father spent his life working in tool and die factories in and around Detroit. My mother worked, on and off, in dress shops. They were able to own their own home, send their son to a fine university, and give him a few extra bucks when he was struggling to raise a family of his own early in his career. My father even had a boat that he dragged around on a trailer. When they retired, they moved to Florida.
It wasn't a lavish life, but it was a good one, made possible in part by the fact he worked in a union town and a unionized industry.
It's a life, I'm afraid, that isn't going to be available to lower-middle-class kids entering a non-unionized workforce today. Certainly not if Republican lawmakers have their way.
Don't worry about the people in the $20 million homes however. They'll be just fine.
Happy (ha ha) Labor Day.
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