Recently, I decided to again use the "Politicklers" label for my political, and occasionally economic, thoughts. I originally had used that label back in 1968, but that's a story for another day. Politicklers #2 and #3 appear on this posting along with a short story and comment on a TV advertisement.
I can use a little help with this blog, so again I remind you that your contributions are always welcome. Marty Troum's piece on the Occupy Wall Street movement elicited one Email reply sent directly to me about the involvement of some extreme left protesters, including anti-Semites, in that movement. Your thoughts, to be included on the blog, are welcome. Let's enjoy the Autumn weather.
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Go West, Young Man, Go West
It was exactly 5:45 PM when the factory whistle sounded for the last time. TV crews and reporters were gathered at the gate of Westlake Manufacturing’s last remaining plant in the United States. A TV reporter, microphone in hand, ran up to Greg as he came through the open gate.
“Sir,” he called out. “Can I speak to you for a moment”?
“Sure,’ the not particularly happy looking middle-aged man replied.
Holding the mike between them him as the cameraman focused in on the scene, the reporter continued. “This is Lou Brandson, CNN, and I am talking to one of the last employees leaving the Westlake Manufacturing Plant here in suburban Pittsburgh, the plant you’ve been hearing about so much in the news lately. Sir, what is your name and how long have you been with Westlake”?
“Greg Witkowski, and I have worked here for twenty years, last five as a senior line inspector.”
“Well, how does it feel, Greg, to be walking out of your plant’s gates for the last time? You know, this is a memorable date.”
Greg’s face looked drawn, but not unhappy.
“Yeah, they told us about it at a meeting last week. We all knew it was coming, what with our plant being the last manufacturing plant left in the United States. Places have been closing all over the country for years, we know, but we kind of figured this place would somehow manage to hang on. I guess it’s a sad day.”
“Why,” the reported continued, “did you feel your plant would survive the changes in our economy which, effective this moment, have moved 100% of America’s manufacturing jobs overseas”?
Greg replied, “Well, we made a pretty complicated electronic gizmo here and we never figured they’d ever find the skills overseas to equal what we do here, but I guess they did.”
“Thank you, Greg Witkowski, an ex-employee of the last remaining manufacturing plant in the United States, which officially closed its doors today. And now back to Soledad O’Brien in New York.”
Once off the air, the reporter turned to Greg. “What are you going to do now, Mr. Witkowski? Did they give you a decent severance package? Are they retraining you in a non-manufacturing job?”
“Oh, sure. I get four months pay because of how long I worked here, but the benefits I get to keep ain’t much. They talked some about training us for computer jobs in marketing, but they shipped those jobs to India last year and that fell through. I looked around outside around here too, but I didn’t want to sell cemetery plots or work in a fast food place. I could have got a lot of jobs like that. But don’t worry about me. I saw it coming and made plans.”
The reporter, sensing a story, inquired, “What then, are you going to do now, Mr. Witkowski”?
Greg smiled at the reporter and reached into his jacket pocket. He pulled out a manila envelope and opened it.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’ve been following up all the want ads and the trade magazines and I got a promise of a new job, doing more or less what I’ve been doing these past five years. Remember that old saying, ‘Go West, Young Man, Go West’? Well, I ain’t such a young man anymore, but I still can go west, very far west in fact.”
With that, the Westlake ex-employee pulled from the manila envelope the four airline tickets which would take him and his family to their new home in northwest Hunan province where the Chinese Ministry of Electronic Manufacturing Operations had promised him a job as line inspector in their new plant which was scheduled to open next month.
“There’s your story, Mr. Reporter. Hello, China, Good-by, USA.”
Jack Lippman
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“Politicklers #2”
I saw Herman Cain on TV the other evening. He carefully explained, when questioned about his 9-9-9 tax program (everyone’s income taxed at 9% with no deductions, a 9% sales tax and a 9% corporate tax) how it would cut the income taxes of the typical $50,000 a year wage earner from about $10,000 to about $4,500. Whoopee!
He then pointed out that since people who earn $50,000 a year spend most of it to live on, the government would not suffer that great a loss in income tax revenue because that wage earner would now be paying the 9% sales tax on whatever they had left to spend after housing and utility costs, which would amount to about $35,000 on which the 9% would amount to $3150, giving back a good chunk of that wage earner’s supposed $5500 tax savings, so the government wouldn’t be hurt that badly. I blinked when I heard Cain saying this since he was no longer talking about tax relief, but worried about 9-9-9’s affect on revenue!. Taking income taxes and Federal sales taxes together (remember there still would be state sales taxes), this would take this worker’s Federal tax savings down to only $2350, but that’s better than nothing. Cain didn’t carry his logic any further during the interview. He was in a cul de sac.
But I will. Someone with earnings of $1,000,000 a year would have their income taxes reduced from $350,000 to $90,000, and if they spent $250,000 on items subject to the 9% sales tax, they would be paying $22,500 in sales taxes. This would bring this lucky fellow’s combined income and sales tax burden to $112,500, still a tax savings of $237,500. Cain’s delusional reasoning says that these tax savings, combined with the tax savings resulting from corporate taxes going down to 9% as well, would enable the private sector of the economy, flush with investor’s cash from these tax savings, to expand, creating many jobs. Unemployed people don’t pay income taxes, but once employed in these jobs, the taxes they would pay, even at 9%, would produce more revenue than the Federal government gets under the present set up, Cain projects.
Let me ask you some questions, friends.
I you earned $1,000,000 a year, and the government reduced your taxes, putting $237,500 extra in your wallet, what would you do with it? And most importantly, would it create jobs?
If you were on the board of directors of a corporation and the reduction to 9% in corporate taxes put a load of money in the company’s account, where would job creation fit into the list of things the corporation might do with that money?
The corollary to any tax scheme involving such large reductions in taxation should be that the money must be spent, and not merely invested. There is a difference. Investing may create jobs, but not necessarily and not immediately. Spending will create jobs right away because it increases demand.
I have heard it suggested from the “right” that impoverished Americans surviving because of the Government’s safety net programs (Welfare and Unemployment Insurance for example) not be paid in cash, which they might waste on alcohol or drugs, but rather with vouchers good only for food, clothing and non-luxury household items.
If Cain’s program, or similar ones, are to work, such restrictions should be put on money gained through income tax reductions over a certain amount. An amount equal to an income tax reduction ought to be spent on something with a “made in USA label on it” within a short period or else it should be owed back to the government. Such spending would create jobs on both the retail and manufacturing levels. As for corporations, their tax reductions would also be owed back to the government if an equal amount were not immediately spent on expansion which directly creates domestic jobs, and not on debt reduction, or executive compensation, for example.
Has any candidate advocating tax reduction as the key to job creation, as Herman Cain and any other Republican within sight of a TV camera always do, advocated anything like this? I think not. And they know why. Do you? If not, go back and read “The Meeting,” posted on this blog on August 10, 2011.
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“Politicklers #3”
Poor President Obama. He knew how to get elected, and lately, as he returns to that mode, he has been a bit better, but by and large, he has lacked the enthusiasm to energize those who elected him in 2008. To do this, he must swing significantly to the left and work for the votes of the unemployed, those with “underwater” mortgages, those for increased regulation of Wall Street and the banking industry, those for expanding the government “safety net” and those for increasing the role of unions in our economy. And since he made his pitch for health care reform, he must fight for it with all of his strength. Will he do any or all of this? I doubt it.
As a lawyer and as a former “community organizer,” he is able to negotiate, mediate and as he has proven, to compromise. He is so good at compromising that he may be the first President to “compromise” himself out of the White House. If Barack Obama had announced from the hustings in 2008 that he would continue the Bush tax cuts, John McCain would be President today. His backing off on a “Federal Option” in the Affordable Health Care Act and adopting the Republican concept of a “mandate” backfired on him. It almost seems to me that Barack Obama doesn’t understand this.
Perhaps he is so busy trying to figure it all out that he lacks the ability to oversee what his administration is doing. The Solyndra loan debacle could have happened in any administration. The arrogance of Attorney General Holder in regard to “Fast and Furious,” which sounds like a super-sting gone wrong, should be tempered. But the President has to stay on top of all of this.
And he hasn’t, and the result is that he is being forced into a defensive posture when what is called for is the opposite. The President has raised a lot of money for the 2012 campaign, and Mitt Romney (no one from the far right will be nominated) will be a formidable opponent. Romney will expand the G.O.P.’s base from the far right which has nowhere else to go into the independent middle ground which Obama dominated in 2008. To win, the President needs a chunk of this middle ground, but also his entire 2008 base which responded to his campaign for change, and who do not believe they got it from the “Great Compromiser.” Things are getting interesting.
Jack Lippman
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TV Commercial Commentary
To me, the mark of a poor TV commercial is my not remembering what is being advertised. One car company (don’t ask me which) has shown a couple of commercials lately illustrating the point that real value is not always evident to everyone, only to those smart and alert enough to recognize that value. The first one I saw showed a “smart” man recognizing that the old beat up baseball his “dummy” neighbor had bought at a garage sale was autographed by the legendary Honus Wagner, and the neighbor just couldn’t care less as he tossed it across the lawn for his dog to chase. The most recent ad in the series shows a “smart” couple leaving a “dummy” couple’s elegant home after a dinner party and commenting on the priceless paintings by Vermeer the host had on his walls. Husband and wife are appalled as they get into their car (I just don’t remember the make), as their host replies, “Yeah, we found them in the attic when we bought this house. My wife and I just love paintings with a lot of yellow in them.”
What really gets me is that to really understand this commercial, one would have to know that Johannes Vermeer was noted for his use of yellow ochre pigments in his paintings, a far more arcane bit of knowledge than the fame of Baseball Hall of Famer Honus Wagner. Not too many TV couch potatoes have that knowledge. After seeing this commercial a few times, I took a good look at the Vermeer postcard (purchased by me at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam) shown below, and damn it, the advertising copywriter was right about the color yellow.
JL
Johannes Vermeer – The Milkmaid
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JL
JL
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1 comment:
The Republicans will nt come up with any plan because jobs would get bama re-electd and they would rather see America suffer then Obama winning.
Jerry Diamnd
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