The Pseudo Job-Creation of Tom Perkins vs. the Real Job-Creation of the New Deal

The Pseudo Job Creation of Tom Perkins:

In the interview above, multi-millionaire Tom Perkins apologizes for using the word "Kristallnacht" to describe the criticism that that the 1% endures from progressives.

Perkins also tells us that America's "creative 1%" are threatened, that the 1% are "job-creators," that "opportunities" are created as the 1% gets richer, and that our economy needs less taxes, less regulations, and less government, so that the 1% can do what they do best--create jobs and opportunities. Yippee, it sounds so magical and comforting!

Perkins is either willfully deceiving us or he is completely oblivious to the fact that (a) the 1% is already enjoying historically low tax rates, (b) the 1% now controls a historically high share of our nation's wealth, and (c) we do have less government, as evidenced by lower federal revenue (when measured as a % of GDP), underfunded regulatory agencies, lower public sector employment, and the presence of numerous Congressmen and women who are paid by right-wing campaign contributors to sabotage our government.

In sum, we have everything that super-wealthy conservatives want (except for complete anarchy), yet the so-called job-creators are still not creating good-paying jobs. What we have is a never-ending cycle of lunacy, where the richer the 1% gets the more they--and they're followers--claim that "onerous taxes" are sapping their job-creation super powers.

How much more of this pseudo job-creation can we take?

The Real Job Creation of the New Deal:

(Image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.)

President Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal policy-makers created jobs in three major ways:

1. They created public job programs like the CCC, CWA, and WPA, and these programs hired well over 10 million different Americans during the Great Depression.

2. They created or advanced a set of policies, programs, and agencies--including minimum wage law, unemployment insurance, Social Security, FDIC, and the Securities & Exchange Commission--that created greater social stability and greater banking stability. For example, bank failures after FDIC were much less frequent than before FDIC. 

3. Through the Public Works Administration (PWA), and also through the aforementioned public job programs, they spent large amounts of money on American infrastructure. The result? After World War II, the economy expanded along New Deal roads, across New Deal bridges, inside New Deal buildings, and out of New Deal airports. America became the economic powerhouse of the world on the back of New Deal infrastructure. Unemployment was low, business grew, the middle-class expanded, and opportunities were numerous (and guess what? people still became very wealthy).

This is job-creation, the New Deal way. No narcissism from the 1% needed.