The contrived controversy over President Obama's "you didn't build that" line raises a more profound question about his leadership that has been overlooked. That is the case for the public sector -- and if you're wondering, what case for the public sector? -- that is precisely what I'm addressing.
The "you didn't build that" imbroglio is a classic out-of-context sound bite for the Romney campaign. Obama was making a simple point: no one succeeds in modern society on their own. They got help from others, including public services like schools, infrastructure, government loans and regulations, and so on. He said it somewhat clumsily, and should have known it would be distorted as an attack on small business and entrepreneurs.
But the Obama sound bite suffers in part because it is a sound bite, not a full-blown speech or philosophical agenda for how and why the public sector is so crucial to the United States, both the health of the economy and the functioning of society. At some point in the last four years, I would have liked to see the president articulate a rationale for why the public sector is important, how it makes the private sector more vibrant, and, yes, why it should grow.
During the tough battles in Wisconsin and Ohio last year, among other places, where GOP governors were slashing budgets for public employees -- teachers, firefighters, etc. -- Obama was rather subdued. He made statements of support for the protestors, but they were pretty anodyne. ""I think it's very important for us to understand that public employees, they're our neighbors, they're our friends," he told a Wisconsin reporter. He has occasionally proposed legislation to help the individual states' capacity to retain public employees, but, again, without forcefully voicing a broad set of ideas to convince Americans that this is right and necessary.
The issue is crucial for two reasons. First is the obvious political meaning. The right wing depicts Obama as interested only in creating "new bureaucrats" while he disses the private job creators. The second is actually more important, because there is a fascinating debate brewing about the worrisome future of the middle class.
That is that 1-2 million jobs or so lost in the 2007-09 recession are simply not coming back. The Bush crash of 2008 led employers to lay off millions, but these corporations have been reluctant to rehire them. The long-feared ravages of automation finally seem to be taking their toll. Businesses find that they can get along without as many red-blooded workers. ATMs replace bank tellers; self-checkout replaces cashiers in supermarkets; automated responders on telephone services replace operators; and of course Internet commerce is supplanting in-person consumerism. This has been a process long to unfold (computer assisted manufacturing has been growing for 30 years), but the advent of the Internet's viability as a principal venue for transactions is probably the topper. Most of the jobs lost in this process came with solid middle class salaries. The disappearance of these jobs is causing severe economic hardship in the middle and lower-income brackets, where real income has declined for a decade.
It's not at all clear that these jobs will ever return to where they were in the 1990s, the last good period of job and income growth. More tax cuts and rhetoric about entrepreneurs won't do the trick. So what will fill this gap? The public sector.
Since the 1980s, federal employment has declined, and in recent years the states have shed hundreds of thousands of jobs. In an earlier gaffe, President Obama alluded to this, saying the private sector is doing "just fine" while the public sector is not. He probably should have stayed with the statistics: since it hit bottom right after his inauguration, the private economy has added four million jobs, and the public sector at all levels has lost 500,000 jobs. Federal employment under Obama has risen slightly, but 90 percent of those jobs are in defense, border security, and the like.
The state and municipal layoffs, which continue at a steady and troubling pace, have a multiplier effect throughout the country. If these laid-off workers are not spending on the ordinary things of life, local merchants feel the pinch. And anxiety about job losses leads the still-employed to tighten their belts.
Reversing this trend is no easy matter, of course. Thirty years of Reaganism have convinced most Americans that enlarging government is always a bad thing. But when asked if they want to improve schools, fix infrastructure, protect the environment, build mass transit, subsidize student loans, and other specific, sensible things, Americans tend to approve if they think it's affordable.
We see student performance in middle and high school declining, and one answer is lower teacher-to-student ratios. We recognize the need for more health care workers in an aging population. We hear incessantly of the need for infrastructure repairs. We know we need to do much more to prevent climate change. The needs are clearly, inarguably evident, and many of the solutions would optimally employ several millions in government service.
The task, of course, is to convince the American people of this dovetailing of need and opportunity. But, so far, the Democratic Party and the Democratic president in particular have not stepped up. Theodore Roosevelt used to say the presidency was above all the "bully pulpit" -- by which he meant the president was uniquely provided with a platform to convey ideas and shape public opinion. And this qualifies as a Big Idea: a permanent expansion of the public sector at all levels to creatively and efficiently tackle the daunting problems we've allowed to fester, while, at the same time, filling the middle class job gap. Obama has given some great speeches on race, on America and the Arab world, at the Nobel awards, and elsewhere. It's time to apply his speechifying and his political skills to a manifesto for the public sector.
 |
 |
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| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
How many of your customers earn over $250k per year? That's right, your _customers_.
We all love low taxes, but we may be losing sight of the forest for the trees. Your tax rate only matters to the extent that you have taxable income. I'm not talking about "fairness" or "economic justice" here. I'm talking about your bottom line and mine. If you don't have customers who can afford to buy what you're selling, you'll make less money, even if your tax rate is lower.
I don't own my own business, but I am fortunate enough to have a job. The products my company makes mostly cost less than 20 bucks, and even a wealthy household only needs so many of them.
The 1% simply can't buy enough of what we're selling to keep me and my co-workers on the job.
However useless, lazy, or unproductive you may think middle class workers are, and public sector ones in particular, for most businesses, those workers are the customers, and if they are busted down into poverty, they aren't buying, and our businesses aren't making a profit even to get taxed.
Limited Liability and the Corporate tax rate. That would really be getting government out of the way.
Does the farmer "create" the crop, or does the farmer, working in concert with "society" (through its collective effort we call "government") and nature (to provide the earth, seed, sun and water) "create" the crop?
The farmer does SELECT good seed and a piece of earth conducive to growing, but he does not CREATE them.
He may irrigate otherwise parched soil or fertilize weak soil. He may even select a seed that has been commercially developed and not even found in "nature". He may grow his crop in glass buildings that concentrate the sun and retain its warmth. But that doesn't make him the "sole creator" of the crop.
Who built the dam that makes that irrigation possible?
Who did the basic science that the seed company used to develop their pest or drought resistant seed?
Who built and maintains the roads that bring in the seed, the fertilizer and even the glass for the greenhouse - and provides the ability to distribute that finished product to a wide enough market that the farmer can grow enough crops to earn a living?
And who guaranteed the loans and supported the market prices so he could shed enough of the risk inherent in farming to justify even trying?
Finally, if this farmer IS growing a crop to feed more than his own family, where is his market, if not the rest of "society"?
So, you're right. Context is very important.
He is politically toast and that is the read from Carville. If you get Media Matters out of the mix you might only lose by 2%. With those woozie headed clowns calling the tune it is a 5% thumping with coat-tails in the Senate!!!!
"that dare to create and prosper" is an insult to the intelligence of everyone who cares about the future of the country and spends the slightest effort thinking about it.
Hint: The Federal Reserve is a private corporation, not a government entity.
The RNC is having lots of fun crushing the "out of context" meme with this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwWW2DQS_DU
The opposition has taken it and skewered it, out of context.
But........Had Obama never said it, we wouldn't be having this discussion, would we?
Point made? I doubt it.
I recently watched the cute-as-a-button S.E. Cupp, resident "conservative" on MSNBC's "The Cycle", flash her Orphan Annies and swear that she had meticulously reviewed Obama's statement — honest, she did... several times — and concluded that Obama had, indeed, denied entrepreneurs credit for their successes.
It wasn't one of those obligatory throw-away lines we've come to expect from right wing voices... oh, no. The little lady was virtually afire with indignation, all but pounding the desk, and her dizzying performance was enabled by a "news" establishment which has itself thrown up its hands in surrender to the Frank Luntz school of thought-and-word-bending.
... which has led me to question when predictable partisan bias gives way to a form of permanent mental illness. The entire "You didn't build that" contortion isn't open to debate among sentient beings who enjoy at least a high-school-level familiarity with the English language. It's the insulting work product of the kind of tedious media dweebs who attach themselves to right-wing campaign organizations and exchange high-fives, every time they find a video clip they can down-edit and misrepresent.
We've come to expect blatant, forehead-slapping dishonesty from the Romney campaign and its associated billion-dollar "social welfare organizations".
Seeing it passively and uncritically "re-tweeted" by what passes for the news media is simply inexcusable.
Pretty flipping clear to me. I get that about all the other stuff, context, infrastructure, etc.
But I also get that sentence.
If anyone believes a business is self sustaining, the think how much more it would cost if an owner had to run his water, sewage, electrical needs to the main facilities and design their own traffic signaling system around their complex?