Written by Ralph Johnson   

Ask any Republican candidate for president what it will take to turn around America's unemployment problem, and you'll hear the same laundry list of vague, disconnected prescriptions:

--“Decrease government regulations—businesses are overwhelmed with regulation.”
--“Lower taxes on “job creators,” so more of their income is freed to “create” jobs.
--“Eliminate the Capital Gains Tax,” so that...huh—the hedge fund managers whose billion-dollar incomes are almost entirely composed of capital gains will pay NO taxes? Hmm.
--“Shrink the size of government”
--“Privatize Social Security”
--“Cut Medicare and Medicaid spending”

In the words of our favorite performance-art-reality-show candidate, Herman Cain, which of the above solutions WILL CREATE A SINGLE JOB? In many instances listed above, jobs would be eliminated, causing thousands if not millions of people to be added to the already overflowing unemployment rolls. What are you shrinking when you shrink the size of government? You're shrinking the payroll, and laying off thousands of human beings—that's what that means.

What's even more infuriating about all of the Republican prescriptions for growth is that they are all front-loaded, and all depend upon giving vast sums of money (or freeing up vast sums which might have been collected in taxes) to people and entities who are already flush with cash, doing very well, and who have no need to be subsidized. The idea is then that, when “uncertainty” is diminished, and the “undue tax burden” is small enough, corporations will magically decide it's time to grow, and the benefits of all those upwardly-aimed gifts will trickle down to the “unwashed masses” in the form of new employment opportunities.

First of all, American corporations have shown little or no inclination, over the last decade, to hire anyone American. There are far too many cheap, easily accessible employees in foreign countries, for whom American corporations will have no health insurance or pension costs (owing to the fact that most foreign employees have their health care costs paid by a government-run program). Why in heaven's name would any self-respecting company hire Americans, who cost more and demand benefits to boot, when the supply of Chinese and Indian citizens, willing to work for next to nothing, has barely been tapped? Even when companies DO expand their payrolls, they're doing it in China and India, not HERE.

Secondly, the above prescriptions all presume that the heads of major corporations are honorable, just, and will place the needs of Americans before their own bottom lines. The Republican plan preaches faith in the beneficence on the part of major corporations, whose actions over the past 30 years have been exactly the opposite—self-serving, greedy, and in many cases blatantly irresponsible. Major corporations in the US are richer than ever, are making record profits, and are sitting on at least a trillion-dollar pool of cash reserves. Why would they even consider hiring new people when they are doing so well with the people they already employ? Where's the incentive? And why would we possibly assume that giving them tons of money will cause them to do anything more than say “thank you,” and deposit the money in already flush bank accounts?

So the question we should be asking the major candidates isn't “how would you fix the economy,” since we already know they are using the Disaster Capitalism technique of taking advantage of a crisis to ram through all the goodies on their wish list, while telling us it's the answer to all of our prayers (and hoping we're stupid enough to believe their malarkey). The question we should be asking is, “what is the last step in the chain of events which leads to job creation? They want us to focus on what they deem to be the first step—freeing up capital—but what is the event, the causality, which immediately precedes new employment? Let's work backwards.

The last step/event is increased consumer demand. How does the facilitation of capital formation create demand? It doesn't. Nobody's going to purchase a new cell phone because Goldman Sachs just got a 10 billion-dollar check. Likewise, nobody's going to buy a new car because Warren Buffet no longer has to pay capital gains taxes on his income. Maybe Warren will...but, come to think of it, he probably already has several cars—nice ones—chances are he's not going to buy 100,000 new vehicles and single-handedly rejuvenate the American auto industry. Disembowel the EPA? David and Charles Koch will thank you, but it won't increase the demand for fuel—it will just reduce the Koch brothers' costs in producing it, so that by NOT passing that savings on to YOU, they can pocket even higher profits.

Every Republican prescription benefits the wealthy directly, but none of their proponents can explain, through any logical progression, how the result would be any more than a handful of new American jobs (mostly white-collar, mostly given to MBAs from the Ivies). What we're missing are blue-collar jobs, at a living wage, with benefits. None of the Republican plans, in any way, addresses that dearth—in fact, through their recent union-busting actions, they have proven they have nothing but contempt for the American working man and woman, that they (the Republican candidates) view labor as a “cost of doing business” for “Americans,” whom they apparently identify exclusively as business owners, as if people who work for a living are equivalent to livestock. Why else would so many Republicans push for lowering or eliminating the minimum wage, eliminating collective bargaining, and making it as difficult as possible for people to join or form unions, as well as making it more difficult for poor people to vote?

None of the candidates ever bothers to connect the dots, and show how their plans would result in increased employment. They simply tell you, “give us the money, and trust us.”

So that's the question the media elites, the debate moderators, the press in general, and the voters in particular (at town-hall style meetings) should be asking—WHAT IS THE LAST STEP BEFORE A JOB IS CREATED, and HOW DO WE GET FROM WHERE WE ARE TO THAT LAST STEP?

If the last step is increased consumer demand, how to we increase demand? Naturally, demand rises when more people are earning a living wage and can spend money. We increase demand by increasing employment, which in turn creates more demand, which in turn creates more employment.

When any Republican candidate can show how ANY of the plans they've proposed increases DEMAND, then it might be worth listening to. Until then, all they've shown is that the people they care about are the ones who can afford to fly them all over the country making speeches to chambers of commerce about the evils of the proletariat.

The Keynesian “make-work” solution ain't pretty, and it's only a stop-gap, but something has to get the demand side flowing again. The Republicans don't have ANY answers to that, other than the leap of faith we take when we further enrich the already fabulously rich.

Why any working person (employed or not) would support the Republican Party is beyond comprehension.