Slow earners
by Tom Sullivan
All this time we spent wringing our hands over the U.S. becoming a kakistocracy, a government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens, we missed a major fringe benefit: Americans would all be extras in the next blockbuster in the Batman franchise.
The studio rolled out its first promotional poster this week:
Steven Mnuchin gets his name on the dollar https://t.co/HlnfQSrdyh pic.twitter.com/0tJxDHjFrk— Bloomberg (@business) November 15, 2017
In homage to the late Adam West, the supervillains in the next “caped crusader” installment will be just as dim as in Batman’s 1960s incarnation. Note the counterfeit one-dollar bills.
Nicholas Kristof writes at the New York Times how tough life is these days for supervillains:
The investment income on, say, a $4 billion fortune is a mere $1 million a day, which makes it tough to scrounge by with today’s rising prices. Why, some wealthy folks don’t even have a home in the Caribbean and on vacation are stuck brooding in hotel suites: They’re practically homeless!
Needing an infusion of cash to keep their private planes aloft, our bilious billionaires have found willing henchmen in the U.S. Congress. (What’s a good Batman villain without dimwitted henchmen?) The GOP-led Congress aims to give them windfall tax cuts to finance their next schemes. Not without harming the citizenry, of course, Kristof observes. They plan to gut Obamacare in the process:
But what’s the big deal? The United States already has an infant mortality rate twice that of Austria and South Korea. American women are already five times as likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth as women in Britain. So who’ll notice if things get a bit worse?
Perhaps that sounds harsh. But the blunt reality is that we risk soul-sucking dependency if we’re always setting kids’ broken arms. Maybe that’s why congressional Republicans haven’t bothered to renew funding for CHIP, the child health insurance program serving almost nine million American kids. Ditto for the maternal and home visiting programs that are the gold standard for breaking cycles of poverty and that also haven’t been renewed. We mustn’t coddle American toddlers.
Special guest villains are phoning their congressional lackeys to warn them if they don’t deliver they won’t get a piece of the action, writes Jonathan Chait:
If tax reform fails, Senator Lindsey Graham recently warned, “the financial contributions will stop.” Representative Chris Collins reported, “My donors are basically saying, ‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again.’ ”
Believe it or not, the administration’s fellow billionaires are not buying the rationale behind the tax-cutting scheme. Oh, they’ll take the money. Just don’t ask them to swallow the same trickle-down nonsense the GOP has been peddling since the Reagan years. They may be greedy, but they’re not stupid. They especially don’t want to look Gary Cohn stupid.
Cohn, the president’s chief economic advisor, was out stumping for the “job-producing, wage-boosting dynamo” of a plan at the Wall Street Journal’s annual CEO Council. Why, cutting taxes for big business will give tycoons more to invest in their businesses and extra pocket money for raising salaries for the little people. Having a roomful of tycoons handy, the Journal asked if the tax bill passes how many thought they would do just that:
People were asked to raise their hand.
When few hands were raised, Cohn, the White House Economic Council director, asked: “Why aren’t the other hands up?”
Greedy, but not stupid.
* * * * * * * *
Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.