Even more egregious than Majority Leader Eric Cantor's (R-VA) cowardly retreat (because it was open to the public) from delivering a speech on wealth disparity is what this undelivered speech actually said.
In this highly touted oration, Cantor proposed... absolutely nothing.
Cantor's "solution" to wealth disparity was not surprising -- private enterprise, especially small business entrepreneurs, would start businesses and give everyone a job.
But, of course, just giving people jobs does not solve the wealth disparity problem. So, Cantor talks about "wealth mobility," that everyone, somehow, can become a billionaire.
This is standard right-wing abuse of optimism. Sure, anyone "might" become a billionaire. But, with a $45T economy, there would only be room for 45,000 billionaires, assuming no one had more than $1B, and no one but those 45,000 had anything.
There are more than 300 million people in the country. 400 families control as much wealth as the bottom 160 million. There is nothing in the Constitution, and nothing in our history since World War II, that suggests there is anything god-given or ordained about that disparity. It is the natural outcome of a rigged system. Indeed, there is very good reason to believe that it is not compatible with true democracy and freedom.
Cantor provides the example of his own family. His grandmother, an immigrant (!) from Eastern Europe, worked hard so her sons could go to college. His father graduated college, went into real estate and did well financially. Eric had an upper middle class upbringing.
Hey, that seems pretty good, all done on their own, no one else helping out, and certainly no help from government -- until one begins to fill in the gaps in the story that are far larger than the high points of Cantor cherry-picks.
One wonders why Cantor aspires to recreate the America of the 1930s (his grandmother's time). That country was not, as Cantor might think, a ribbon of highways with Model-T Fords in place of Toyotas. One-third of the nation was "ill-clad, ill-housed and ill-nourished." Rural areas had no electricity. Grain farmers in the plains states had overused and misused their land producing the dust bowl. Poverty among the elderly was the rule, not the exception.
Much of that was fixed. By government action.
Then, there is Cantor's father. He received a public education, and apparently made good money in real estate -- that would have not have been possible had government not built roads, sewers and water systems, and provided courts and a justice system to enforce contracts, and had Fannie and Freddie and the VA not supplied funding and supported the housing industry. Of course, Fannie and Freddie got out of control along with Wall Street, but for decades they were critical elements of a sound housing market. Without them, home ownership would never have reached levels it did even before the bubble, and Cantor's father would have been in a very low margin, low volume business. Who knows, he might have needed the earned-income-tax-credit and Medicaid for him and his family to survive.
Cantor then turns to Steve Jobs. One can make the obvious point that Steve Jobs is the poster child for entrepreneurship because he is unique. Sure, there are several more stories that will emerge in the next decades in which new "Steve Jobs's" will arise, but they will be a distinct minority. One has no doubt they, whoever they are, will change the way we do things, and become very rich in the process.
It is not clear how that will address wealth disparity.
As for jobs (lower case "j"), if the new breed follows Cantor's new idol, many of those jobs will, like the Jobs' jobs, be created overseas. Why? In part because China, India, Taiwan and other emerging countries are putting major government funds into education and infrastructure, while the US, thanks to Cantor and his gang, forswear such sins.
But, even if one ignores all that reality, there is one unarguable fact that may make Cantor wish he had never mentioned Steve Jobs:
When Jobs started Apple, the top tax rate was 70%.
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He is not a great thinker.
He and his ilk are touting a policy of austerity.
Austerity does not lead to greatness. Contracting the economy now would make initiate a death spiral.
That, of course, is their goal. Tank the economy, blame this administration, and regain power.
The problem being that no one in the GOP has any idea how to make things better if that should happen.
Obama/Biden 2012. We can't risk the alternative.
What then, would they do, to get us out of a depression? Boggles my mind. I can't even imagine...
Somalia, anyone?
a side note is that he also credits LSD with being a major factor in the opening of his mind and allowing him otherwise unattainable inspiration and imagination. in Cantor's world, the young Steve Job's belonged in prison, not a corporate boardroom.
When you get down to it, the iPod is the Sony Walkman with different media and content purchasing options. From a technology perspective, white rice in snoozeville. From a marketing perspective (getting revenue on song purchases), a bonanza.
Edison was 100% a technology guy, whereas Jobs was more around 33%. His technology push to get Unix under the Mac OS cost him his job at Apple and forged his ill-fated NeXT pursuit. The development environment for iPhone and iPad is basically from NeXT, which is a tribute to his technical expertise. But the fact is that the Apple brand and "coolness" factor of the iPod (marketing) is what launched the company's latest success... not to mention the company's fanatical litigiousness over "intellectual property" (not that they're the only litigious technology company, of course....) which helps treble competitiveness and innovation while passing along the high development and legal costs to consumers.
Sorry for the nit.... I do agree with your point, though. :-)
There seemed to be very many unhappy locals on the scene, and Cantor walked back his hard-line, Tea Party stance pretty quickly.
Eric Cantor shows his true colors. It is like that old saying: "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS!"
It may be a very sad day for the country when/if Cantor is returned to Congress!
I would agree, a really sharp Democrat could beat or scare the hell out of Cantor. He has made a lot of incredibly stupid remarks lately and has been nothing but an obstructionist.
Did they use any bank loans or 100% private funds?
Did their customers need a bank loan or credit card to purchase their product?
How about community or state tax breaks for business start-ups?
Public roads, city sewer & water, fire & police protection?
Were truck drivers tested & licensed by the state?
Did the trucks themselves pass inspection and meet government guidelines?
Was your patent protected to prevent a big company from stealing your idea (intellectual property)?
Government has its hand in every aspect of our lives: electrical lights, wiring codes, plumbing, roads, vehicles, coffee pot, food, water, radio & tv stations to the pillow we sleep on at night.
You can't be rich without someone else around who has less.
If everybody had as much money as Bill Gates, who would he hire to scrub his toilets?
At which point he's asking himself "Hey, if I'm so rich, how come I have to clean the bathrooms myself?".
If you think about it, the rich need the less well-off more than the other way around, because the less well-off can band together for enterprises that need large capitalization.
The members he leads have no more courage than he does.
No confrontation or heated conversation for him.
Uncomfortable? - He's out of there.