People, especially Americans, completely misunderstand the role their government plays in their society. Because we are all narcissists to some extent we look for validation of our selfish motivations in our government representatives. Even those impoverished by the extremes of neoliberalism and the markets that prey upon them see themselves as the next Bezos. It’s what keeps people throwing their money into impossible to beat odds of lotteries.
We are all the heroes in our own stories. Heroes need enemies to vanquish, and the largest possible enemy of their imaginary success is the government that is purposed to aid the lesser, the unpopular, the incapable of society and detract from your success to do it, even if your odds of any measurable success are astronomically slight.
As long as the government can be portrayed as a cost, a “taker” it will be associated with those lesser beings it enables. This is why capitalists spend large amounts of their money to perpetuate the fantasy that “they” produce wealth and the government simply wants to spread the fruits of that effort to those who didn’t /can’t contribute. It is also why we keep electing the wealthy to leadership, thinking that their business success will translate to an “efficient” government that takes less from those who earn it.
The macroeconomic truth is that those most reliant upon the government are not single mothers or the disabled. It is the wealthy. That dependence goes much deeper than the obvious of infrastructure and a reasonably educated workforce that enable their businesses. It goes to the core fact that their ability to hoard wealth is only possible because the government creates more money than it destroys in taxation, deficit spending. Without excess money in circulation, there would be no means to store value from their commerce, or even to denominate it in something spendable, dollars.
Because the only “NET” source of dollars in the economy is the deficit spending of the government and the national debt is simply a record of accumulated deficits our nation’s net worth in dollars (after factoring out private sector debt) can be related to that number that politicians all agree is too large (out of ignorance or corruption, you can pick). However, our tax policies have allowed one man out of 350 million, Jeff Bezos, to accumulate one half a percent of that total.
While the workers of his company carry piss bottles (hold that picture in your mind when ordering from Amazon) so they can meet the quota demands of their $28k average per year jobs, Bezos makes 157 times that much ($4.5 million) per HOUR. Americans not only democratically approve of this, but will threaten revolt should Congress attempt to protect the democratic process by taxing him progressively and many think he would be an excellent President and role model for society. Sane societies would be well advised to isolate America in the world to prevent any communication of its illness.
