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September 20, 2012 8:57 AM “Makers:” The Tiny Band of Heroes

By Ed Kilgore

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Paul Krugman made a point late yesterday that really ought to be emphasized: in describing 47% of the U.S. population as hopelessly dependent “takers” during his Boca Moment, Mitt Romney was actually being pretty generous as compared to now-routine GOP rhetoric on economic life:

Ask yourself: when was the last time a Republican leader made a point of praising hard-working, ordinary families — as opposed to “job creators”? Think about what happened on Labor Day: on a day dedicated to celebrating workers, House majority leader Eric Cantor sent out a tweet praising … business owners:
“Today, we celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned their own success.”
This all makes sense in the Ayn Rand intellectual universe, where a handful of heroically greedy entrepreneurs are responsible for all that is good. And if you live in that universe, your dividing line between makers and takers isn’t drawn at the point where people make enough to pay income taxes; everyone who isn’t John Galt should be grateful for what the Galts do, and we’re all takers by asking those heroes to pay any taxes at all.

Think about it. A large percentage of GOP economic policy thinking is based on the assumption that minimizing business costs is the alpha and omega of growth and competitiveness. Not only taxes and regulations, but also wages and benefits, need to be kept as low as possible. The whole idea of “human capital” being a national asset worth cultivating—a universally accepted notion in the 1990s—has all but been lost on the right.

Accordingly, if you don’t fall into the charmed circle of “job creators;” if you don’t own your own business, or have enough wealth to make significant capital investments; then your job, it appears, is to bear down, shut up, and do what you can to make life easier for your bosses. Abandon that union; stop asking for pay increases; gracefully accept that shift from defined benefit to defined contribution pensions, or from any pension to none; pay your taxes and stop worrying about the tax rates paid by your superiors—you’re lucky they pay them at all, given the fact you already owe them your daily bread, everything you own, and your very life.

It’s hard to figure out whether this attitudes is the product of a serious economic POV or just a long-building psychological backlash against “collectivism” by wealthy people who feel underappreciated and think they should enjoy a lot more wealth and freedom than is currently available to them. That their relative wealth has steadily increased for decades now, and has continued to increase even as all those wretched “takers” out there have been suffering through the worst U.S. economic calamity since World War II, seems immaterial.

So whatever else it represents, the Boca Moment provides a glimpse into the unsavory world view of people who look at their own employees, not to mention other folks with few capital assets, with what can only be described as contempt—as cannon fodder for the great competitive struggle in which they, the “job creators,” are the only fully human figures.

Ed Kilgore is a contributing writer to the Washington Monthly. He is managing editor for The Democratic Strategist and a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute. Find him on Twitter: @ed_kilgore.
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Comments

  • esaud on September 20, 2012 9:13 AM:

    Many op/eds criticizing Mitt go only half way, e.g. Nicholas Kristof says sure, freeloaders are a problem, or David Brooks says unemployment disability checks create dependency.

    But is that true? It seems to me that when there is a crackdown on cheaters, it is mostly the business side, like Florida's governor.

    And I don't see how unemployment checks, handed out in 13 week increments at the mercy of Congress, capped at 99 weeks, can possibly create dependency.

    Ditto disability: you need to be certified every year to stay on it, so if there are cheaters there, then the doctors certifying them are complicit, too.

    The whole "Cadillac driving welfare queen" theme has been fully incorporated into the right wing psyche, but other than anecdotal evidence, is not supported by fact.

  • Napoleon on September 20, 2012 9:13 AM:

    It is the southern way of thinking imposed on the nation as a whole, that is what it is.

  • T2 on September 20, 2012 9:15 AM:

    I hardly think it's a revelation that the Republican Party is built to enhance the wealth of the wealthy, and that it's done at the expense of the less than wealthy. The revelation is that the Republican Party has managed to convince a large percent of the "less than wealthy" that supporting their policies is a good thing. So I'd say there are two groups of less than wealthy - smart ones and dumb ones. Guess which group votes GOP.

  • walt on September 20, 2012 9:18 AM:

    I know a millionaire business owner who lives and breathes this ideology, which is one part Ayn Rand and one part country-club kaffeeklatsch. They're rich because they're work so hard. There's no other explanation. I know other Republicans who are not rich but still see themselves as favored creatures in a dog-eat-dog world. Their advantage is their skin color. And I know others who see their advantage as the Jesus that lives inside them.

    What they all have in common is the idea that they're better than others. It's hard to imagine a Republican who believes these "others" might have a stake in their moral universe. Rather, their world is hermetically sealed against those who are "takers", "libs", "moochers", and the like. It's the ideology of selfish teenage boys and it's this utter lack of self-awareness that makes the heterogeneous elements of the Republican Party cohere. They may love Ayn Rand or Jesus as savior but the entire point is that they're the blessed ones and you're not.

  • T2 on September 20, 2012 9:37 AM:

    @walt -" they're the blessed ones and you're not." humm....kinda sounds like something a Mormon might think, huh?

  • del on September 20, 2012 9:38 AM:

    this is the same attitude that feudal lords, kings, and dictators and those in totalitarian societies have held and practiced for centuries. the peasants should be thankful for the crumbs they get thrown and for being allowed to work their fingers to the bone to support their reign.

    and why do republicans keep saying that we are broke? if we are broke, then how can they continue to get richer? if we are broke, then how can we say that we have confidence in our society? if we are broke, should we hold those who corrupted the system accountable? if we are broke, then why do they want a government job to live off of and to get all the benefits from? where is their logic in their diatribe?

  • Marc on September 20, 2012 9:45 AM:

    This is called the Attribution Error by psychologists. We attribute success to our own efforts, our failures to external circumstances.
    After the 2008 Crash and the bailout of Wall Street when brokers got their bonuses (large if you recall)a reporter visited a bar and asked the brokers there why they got their bonus and whether it was due, at all, to the bailout. They said it was because they were smart, smarter than anyone else and they deserved all of it. The bailout had nothing to do with it.
    Kings, as someone has already said above, did think they were kings because they were anointed by God.

  • Karen on September 20, 2012 9:49 AM:

    I heard a version of this yesterday when I noted that most of the 47% pay payroll taxes for Medicare and Social Security. My interlocutor responded that those weren't taxes because the worker would get them back in the form of payments at retirement. My answer was that if that is the case, then is he abandoning his position that Medicare and SS Re going broke and so need reform?

  • SadOldVet on September 20, 2012 9:52 AM:

    Excellent column Ed. Good work.

  • c u n d gulag on September 20, 2012 9:53 AM:

    If they don't wake up, one of these days, after we barbarians have broken past the gates at their communitites and mansions, the last thoughts of some of these "Job Creators" is going to be, "You know, maybe I SHOULD have listened a little bit more to those Occupy folks. What harm would that have don..."

    And then, that last thought will fall to the floor, dead, along with the thinker.

  • kd bart on September 20, 2012 10:02 AM:

    Count de Monet: Your Highness, the peasants are revolting.

    King Louis XIV: You said it. They stink on ice.

    -Mel Brooks' History of the World Part I

  • berttheclock on September 20, 2012 10:04 AM:

    The poster, walt, above posts an interesting comment about that line used so often of the better off. "They're rich because they have worked so hard". I have read this so often coming from comments from posters living in tony areas. Recently, there was an article in the Oregonian about the difficulties of trying to place any Section 8 unit in Lake Oswego, a tony area just south of Portland. Comments to the editor included that line of "I have worked hard to be able to live here. Why should I try to help anyone who doesn't work as hard". Other letters from that area have stated the "work hard to get ahead". Perhaps, they have worked so hard they fail to see how hard their gardening crews work or the workers putting new roofs on their mansions. They do not get out early in the AM to see buses filled with workers going into early shifts, many of whom have darker skins than most of the other workers. While many of the rich are wineing and dining, cleanup crews are going into buildings to clean at night. Many of those workers have just come off other daytime jobs. They fail to comprehend many of those workers having to work 2 to 3 jobs per day, just to exist. BTW, who really worked harder, the owner of the estate or his vast field crews who picked his cotton or sugar cane? If these rich gripers ever had to work as hard as the vast majority of working people in this land, they might even be far richer.

  • berttheclock on September 20, 2012 10:12 AM:

    @Karen, the Republican hack of a so-called econ guru at the Washington Post, Robert Samuelson, has written often in the past year about Social Security recipients being on welfare as he states they are receiving more than they paid into the fund.

    At the downtown SSA office in Portland, my wife, who has worked ever since she graduated with a Masters from Mills, was told the same thing by an employee of the SSA. He told her she should be lucky to get what SSA would pay her as, in his words, no one has paid enough into SSA. My wife worked for many years in both Catholic high schools and universities, yet, she was told she would be receiving "welfare" checks.

  • Zinsky on September 20, 2012 10:22 AM:

    Some interesting comments here - this attitude is very similar to a slaveowner, who doesn't see his slaves as human or recognize that absolutely nothing would get done without their labor. This is very much a Southern attitude and is a vestigial remnant of the antibellum South. Taking the analogy further, slaveowners kept their slaves ignorant and living in fear because they knew their sheer numbers would make them unstoppable if they were to get "uppity" and rise up against their masters. Democrats need to use this language and make these explicit analogies to slavery - to make the ignorant, poor bastards who vote Republican, realize how badly they are being used!

  • Diane Rodriguez on September 20, 2012 10:23 AM:

    "welfare queens" drive 1 Cadillac. The proof that you are a true queen is driving 2 Cadillacs( see Lady Ann, wife of Lord Small Balls).

  • Peter C on September 20, 2012 10:32 AM:

    @berttheclock is right, yet the Republicans will also cry that Social Security is a BAD INVESTMENT relative to the market because when you put money in the market you get so much more back (unless there is a crash).

    Social Security is not an investment program; it is a social program. We take care of the elderly and disabled during our working lives so that we needn't fear destitution when we grow old and are least able to support ourselves. We've done it so we have the society we want - one where people care for each other. The Republicans would trade it all for a quick buck.

  • golack on September 20, 2012 10:34 AM:

    So where do these POG legislators fit in a Randian universe?

    "You give me a piece of the action, and I'll keep the gov't off your back"????

  • Celui on September 20, 2012 10:49 AM:

    I keep waiting for the GOTP's actual policy statement to have some actual substance behind them. What onerous government 'regulations' do they want to do away with? Coal mine safety regs? Sure. OSHA regs that require safety harnesses when working above a certain height? Sure. Food safety regs that limit the amounts of bacterial contamination in the food supply? Sure. Financial industry regs that require lenders to have a specified amount of reserves in order to make loans to homebuyers, small businesses and the like? Sure. So--if these 'onerous regs' and others are just choking off business's futures, let's get these specifics out there. But, I can guarantee that the Coal Miner's Daughter wants those safety regs for her family, that the construction worker's mom or wife wants her son/husband to come home in one piece each night, that the food I prepare for my family each day is not going to poison them, that the loan that my neighbor takes out to purchase his home next to mine can't become an elephant on his back that crushes his ability to pay off his mortgage. And, so it goes: specifics in Rmoney's case will become very telling--they'll tell the truth about his 'vision' of the future for those who have, and his vision for the other 'little people' (many more than just 47%). And, just what else will he and Ryan have to add about Medicare, education, foreign policy, monetary policy, Social Security, healthcare? I can't wait for the "specifics."

  • davidp on September 20, 2012 10:49 AM:

    25 years ago Allan Bloom argued in The Closing of the American Mind that US culture had become corrupted by second-hand European ideas. He was of course looking at the Left. But the Ayn Rand philosophy is just a bastardized version of Nietzsche's Superman, concocted by an embittered woman whose family had lost their property in the Russian Revolution. It's deeply ironical that for many people this garbage has come to represent the epitome of the American Way.

  • Anonymous on September 20, 2012 10:51 AM:

    [T]he ideology of selfish teenage boys sounds about right, especially this year. It explains Romney and Ryan so succinctly.

    Between Napoleon, walt and T2 (immediately following) I think we an explanation of the GOTea side of the 2012 election cycle. An entitled Moron - er, Mormon - and his entitled sidekick out to defend their positions while bashing everyone else. It makes you wonder whether, while discussing those who are not "job creators," they have to stop themselves from saying "property" and cough out "workers" instead.

  • Josef K on September 20, 2012 10:57 AM:

    This is going to get ugly. Possibly uglier than the Reign of Terror proved, if only because we Americans are a naturally violent people.

  • R on September 20, 2012 11:04 AM:

    Romney's favorite job creators are the ones doing the most to destroy the planet. Their carbon footprints alone are outrageous; when you add in their buying elections so that they can shed the chains of regulations (read: screw the workers and the people stuck with polluted fracking water and the people downwind from their smokestacks etc. etc.) it seems obvious that they're the ones taking from the rest of us.

    Marc's right, though, about attribution error. I remember that bar scene well. I know lots of people smarter than those guys; they just don't choose to go into such exploitive lines of work.

  • jjm on September 20, 2012 11:17 AM:

    Well ever since the Koch Brothers listened to their dad who read Marx and decided he wanted the opposite of Marx: the overthrow not of the ruling class, but of the working class, they have put a truly spooky stamp on the GOP and their wealthy cohort.

    The mental aberration of one man has had profound effects.

  • jsjiowa on September 20, 2012 11:42 AM:

    A lot of this attitude has even seeped into government. I worked for a government manager who treated employees (mostly an office of lawyers, with some support staff) exactly like you describe. Don't even ask for raises, much less point out how many hours of unpaid overtime you've been putting in. Don't make any comments at staff meetings, even if the legislature puts a freeze on merit increases and promotions (and expect to be called in to the manager's office after the meeting and berated and told never to speak up in public again, even if the previous manager allowed such free-flowing meetings). Don't make any suggestions about how the office can be run better, because you're not in a decision-making position and your observations are irrelevant. Needless to say, the effect of working in such a fearful, toxic environment was devastating on morale. But when jobs are scarce, employees don't always have other options. And employers like this will often abuse their power, rather than treating employees like a valued resource.

  • T2 on September 20, 2012 11:50 AM:

    thank you Peter C for reminding us all the true nature of Social Security.
    And yes, there will always be a crash. Just ask any Baby Boomer how great trusting the Market has been for his retirement.....wiped out at the end of the 90's and again at the end of the Bush regime in 07-08. Lots of Boomers have been forced to file for their SocSec early due to losing their retirement egg in their Market based 401's.

  • Rabbler on September 20, 2012 12:04 PM:

    I think you are looking at the 90s with rose colored glasses. Maybe Clinton colored.

  • rrk1 on September 20, 2012 12:09 PM:

    The prattle from the Kristianist crowd about how this is a Christian Country seems to avoid any mention of Christ's teachings about taking care of the least among us. Certainly a communitarian point-of-view. One would think that Paul Ryan, a devout Roman Catholic, would recognize that many in his church (not its hierarchy) try to live by those teachings. Instead he is a devoted disciple of Rand, who was an avowed atheist, and worshipped selfishness and greed. He is a devout social Darwinist. How he reconciles, or more likely rationalizes, his religion with his politics would be interesting to hear. No one seems to dare to ask him the obvious questions.

    Romney, the former and secretive Mormon Bishop, who supposedly tithes his enormous income to his church, shuns any discussion of his religious beliefs or the Mormon faith. Mormons believe in taking care of their own, and go so far as to baptize dead non-Mormons to bulk up their count of the faithful. Obviously, based on his comments in Boca, he doesn't believe the peasants have any claim on a decent life, I suppose, because no Mormons are peasants. Or something like that. He too is a social Darwinist.

    Many of the fundamentalist mega-churches, claiming to be Christian, preach the prosperity gospel. If you're rich it's because god approves of you and what you do. If you're poor you've displeased god and poverty is your punishment. It's simple and it works for the haves not to have to worry about the have-nots.

    So I'm living, every more reluctantly, in the supposedly and overwhelmingly Christian country, and wondering what happened to Christ's values.

  • LK on September 20, 2012 12:24 PM:

    I want to add one thing to davidp's point
    "25 years ago Allan Bloom argued in The Closing of the American Mind that US culture had become corrupted by second-hand European ideas. He was of course looking at the Left. But the Ayn Rand philosophy is just a bastardized version of Nietzsche's Superman, concocted by an embittered woman whose family had lost their property in the Russian Revolution. It's deeply ironical that for many people this garbage has come to represent the epitome of the American Way."

    I completely agree that Rand is a bastardized philosophy. I think the Republicans have not only taken the bastardaized Nietzsche but they have also corrupted Kant.

    The peculiar genius of the Republican use of Rand is that they have created a sort of categorical imperative: the worship of business leaders is a universal maxim. In so doing, they have, as Ed points out, created a maxim that violates Kant's orignical formulation: treat individuals as an end unto themselves never as a means to an end.

  • c00p on September 20, 2012 5:59 PM:

    There are 7 deadly sins, right?, but greed is the one that does the most damage, I think.