Thread: Anti Business Consevatism in America!

Why is there no pro-business conservatism in America? At first the question might come as a surprise. After all, conservative thinkers and politicians pose as champions of the private sector.
But in reality, the economic agenda pushed by the American right benefits chiefly “rentiers” or investors — the minuscule number of individuals who are wealthy enough to live on streams of income from their investments. An alternative pro-business conservatism would find many points of agreement with the center and center-left — and would be strikingly different from today’s American right.
The prevailing economic theory of the American right is that economic growth is driven by investment; investment is driven by capital; and rich people own a disproportionate share of the capital. Therefore, cutting taxes on the rich will lead directly to more investment within the United States, which in turn will lead directly to more broadly shared economic growth in the United States. This supply-side, trickle-down theory provides the rationale for Paul Ryan’s plan to eliminate capital gains taxes completely; remember that Reagan actually championed against that and raised the Capital Gain Taxes back to 30 some Percent
The theory is flawed in many ways. To begin with, conservative trickle-down economics exaggerates the role of rich individuals in investment, much of which is funded by the retained earnings of companies. Trickle-down theory also ignores the importance of the pooled savings of non-rich Americans in 401Ks and employer pension plans.
An even greater problem with this theory lies in the assumption that increased after-tax income for the rich will be translated automatically into increased investment. The rich may not invest their money in productive enterprises at all. They may spend their money on what Thorstein Veblen called conspicuous consumption. They may hoard their money. Or they may invest it in enterprises that provide them with a steady return but contribute little or nothing to productivity growth — for example, casinos of the kind owned by conservative donor Sheldon Adelson.
There is another flaw in the conservative economic theory. In a global economy, there is no guarantee that rich investors will invest the money they save from tax cuts in productive enterprises in the United States. They may invest in factories in China or the energy sector in Brazil. In such cases, tax cuts for the American rich will spur investment in other countries but not the U.S. And even if investment-driven growth occurs inside U.S. borders, most or all of the gains from growth may go to the few, not the many, as in the last generation.

read more....

Why aren’t conservatives pro-business? - Salon.com

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I can certainly understand the Right Side anger, specially since a Black man is telling them what to do and how to act, and I do certainly get the fascination with guns...What I don't get is why the so called conservatives keep shooting themselves in foot election after election by voting for people who have consistently work relentlessly against America, and American Middle Class for the benefits of few oligarchs.

Diving Mullah

If you want people to read your thread please stop fudging around with your font so it can be legible enough for people to read.

I read the link, didn't notice any font issues there.

Regardless, I tend to agree with the article. the only thing that disapointed me was that it failed to mention that one of the not-so-productive things that the rich do when they get richer is that they "invest" in the stock market. While I recognize that there is some value to providing liquidity, little of the new money going into the stock market is actually used to fund new businesses - most of it simply inflates the price of stocks beyond their underlieing economic value. An extra billion invested into facebook stock does nothing to create jobs or anything else.

Also the article may have failed when it pointed out that the rich sometimes use increases in riches to purchase conspicuous consumption type items, thats not a bad thing at all, the more consumption, the better, because spending is one of the few redistributive mechanisms that our free market economy has.

If the author wanted to make a strong point, he should have ignored the fact that rich people are spenders, and concentrated on the fact that rich people tend to sink most of their money into the ponzi scheme that we call the "stock market".

My fair and honest evaluation, free of spin or ideological motivations.