As the squabble over the federal budget continues, I thought it would be worthwhile to document how politicians on both sides of the aisle lay down a line of serious BS when it comes to the economy and its impact on businesses. There are the lies that Democrats regularly tell. For the other side see:
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Lie #1: What's good for big business is good for the country
It used to be that "What's good for GM is good for the country." But that was when large companies actually employed a a large number of American workers. Today, many huge companies are deployed so heavily overseas that they're not really American at all. Many multinationals are, for all intents and purposes, sovereign states. Some even have their own standing armies. Even so, U.S. politicians, including many Democrats, continue treat such corporations as if they were American entities, and are more than happy to accept their campaign contributions, even though this is tantamount to accepting money from a foreign country.
As my brilliant colleage, BNET blogger Alain Sherter pointed out in his post "Why the Feds Won't Prosecute Bankers", corporations that are deemed "too big to fail" are routinely given a free pass when they commit crimes. The executives who commit criminal acts are allowed to walk and the companies themselves given a nominal fine, in order to make certain that the company survives. As a result, executives at huge firms know that they can continue to commit crimes, because they know they will not be held accountable. Any attempt to regulate such firms so that they can't wriggle out is quickly squelched, primarily by Republicans, but aided and abetted by those Democrats who are also sucking at the corporate teat.
Democrats constantly pander to the feminists by insisting that men are still paid more than women. But here's the truth: when you factor out the time that women spend having children and caring for them, and then compare apples to apples (i.e. same job, same start date), the gender pay gap shrinks to statistical insignificance. This lie is pernicious because it distracts people from looking at the REAL pay gap, which is insane accumulation of wealth and earnings among the super-rich. As long as politicians can keep middle-class men and women squabbling over table scraps, nobody will notice that ALL of the economic gains of the past three decades have gone to those who were already obscenely wealthy.
Politicians at the federal level, including Democrats, are so far removed from poverty, or even from the middle-class, that it's impossible for them to have any idea what it is actually like to try to survive in the current economic climate. Many members of congress are millionaries and multi-millionaires, as are most of the senators. Many come from families with inherited wealth. They are all highly paid, with the world's best health insurance, and lifetime job security as lobbyists or industry consultants. The idea that anyone in this position can "feel the pain" is sickeningly absurd.
Democrats since the Clinton era have insisted that free trade creates jobs. And it does...in places where labor is cheap. In the United States, free trade has created massive outsourcing that has, in turn, gutted entire sectors of the economy. It's not just the manufacturing jobs that have gone away. There are hundreds of thousands of highly-trained engineers, for example, who are being put out of work by engineers abroad who will work for what in the United States would be minimum wage. The collapse of the American job market was hidden for years by a massive glut of borrowing and consumer spending, but now it's come home to roost, to the point where gaining back a tiny fraction of the jobs that were lost is considered a huge victory.
