Economic Politics

"The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for -- not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men of property to whom God has given control of the property rights of the country." --  George F. Baer, president, Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, 1901.

"I give  (money) to all the politicians. Then, when I need something, they're there for me." -- Donald J. Trump.

   Ultraconservative politicians and corporate executives manipulate government policy for their own economic gain. If employers had been providing adequate wages and working conditions for their workers, activist labor unions may not have been needed.
   As it was, underpaid and overworked laborers organized unions to force what was, to them, morally right. However, students of history know that the wealthy elite support political candidates who will, in turn, enact legislation that favors those same supporters.
   Government spending does, in fact, provide economic benefits, and that's as it should be. But when those tax and spending policies favor a few at the expense of the many, that's a problem that affects the economic health of the entire nation.
   As noted on this blog in May, 2013, members of the petulant class believe that their status alone, as part of the wealthy one percent, entitles them to special benefits and special treatment, and they are surprised and insulted when they don't get it.
   Such an attitude was widespread in the 19th Century, when industrialists believed they knew what was right and appropriate, therefore workers in the so-called lower classes should behave themselves and do what they were told.
   Sound familiar? That same 19th Century attitude is unfortunately still around today, with some political candidates displaying their feelings that they know what's good for the country and their corporations, and therefore is good for the country. That may be true as far as it goes, but it's doesn't go very far. Former General Motors Chairman Charles Wilson, to whom that hubristic quote is attributed, really said  that the company was part of the whole, and that government policy decisions work both ways -- what's good for one is good for the other.
   As it is, the self-appointed guardians of the public morals combine morality with economics and politics, and invoke a divinity to endorse their arguments. The possibility that the same deity they invoke for their own purposes may have equal feelings for all others doesn't seem to apply. To them, the wealthy are a better class of people because they are wealthy, and the poor are poor because they deserve to be poor, as if poverty is somehow a moral failing.
   "I did it, so can you," they proclaim. As if Shaquille O'Neal could say a Munchkin would have identical success in professional basketball.