"Disdain
for Workers "
By
PAUL KRUGMAN
New
York Times /Opinions (September 20, 2012)
By now everyone knows how Mitt Romney, speaking to donors in Boca Raton, washed his
hands of almost half the country — the 47 percent who don’t pay income taxes —
declaring, “My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them
that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” By
now, also, many people are aware that the great bulk of the 47 percent are
hardly moochers; most are working families who pay payroll taxes, and elderly
or disabled Americans make up a majority of the rest.
But here’s the question: Should we imagine that Mr. Romney and his party
would think better of the 47 percent on learning that the great majority of
them actually are or were hard workers, who very much have taken personal
responsibility for their lives? And the answer is no.
For the fact is that the modern Republican Party just doesn’t have much
respect for people who work for other people, no matter how faithfully and well
they do their jobs. All the party’s affection is reserved for “job creators,” a
k a employers and investors. Leading figures in the party find it hard even to
pretend to have any regard for ordinary working families — who, it goes without
saying, make up the vast majority of Americans.
Am I exaggerating? Consider the Twitter message sent out by Eric Cantor, the
Republican House majority leader, on Labor Day — a holiday that specifically
celebrates America’s workers. Here’s what it said, in its entirety: “Today, we
celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned
their own success.” Yes, on a day set aside to honor workers, all Mr. Cantor
could bring himself to do was praise their bosses.
Lest you think that this was just a personal slip, consider Mr. Romney’s
acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. What did he have to
say about American workers? Actually, nothing: the words “worker” or “workers”
never passed his lips. This was in strong contrast to President Obama’s
convention speech a week later, which put a lot of emphasis on workers —
especially, of course, but not only, workers who benefited from the auto
bailout.
And when Mr. Romney waxed rhapsodic about the opportunities America offered
to immigrants, he declared that they came in pursuit of “freedom to build a
business.” What about those who came here not to found businesses, but simply
to make an honest living? Not worth mentioning.
Needless to say, the G.O.P.’s disdain for workers goes deeper than rhetoric.
It’s deeply embedded in the party’s policy priorities. Mr. Romney’s remarks
spoke to a widespread belief on the right that taxes on working Americans are,
if anything, too low. Indeed, The Wall Street Journal famously described low-income
workers whose wages fall below the income-tax threshold as “lucky duckies.”
What really needs cutting, the right believes, are taxes on corporate
profits, capital gains, dividends, and very high salaries — that is, taxes that
fall on investors and executives, not ordinary workers. This despite the fact
that people who derive their income from investments, not wages — people like,
say, Willard Mitt Romney — already pay remarkably little in taxes.
Where does this disdain for workers come from? Some of it, obviously,
reflects the influence of money in politics: big-money donors, like the ones
Mr. Romney was speaking to when he went off on half the nation, don’t live
paycheck to paycheck. But it also reflects the extent to which the G.O.P. has
been taken over by an Ayn Rand-type vision of society, in which a handful of
heroic businessmen are responsible for all economic good, while the rest of us
are just along for the ride.
In the eyes of those who share this vision, the wealthy deserve special
treatment, and not just in the form of low taxes. They must also receive
respect, indeed deference, at all times. That’s why even the slightest hint
from the president that the rich might not be all that — that, say, some
bankers may have behaved badly, or that even “job creators” depend on
government-built infrastructure — elicits frantic cries that Mr. Obama is a
socialist.
Now, such sentiments aren’t new; “Atlas Shrugged” was, after all, published
in 1957. In the past, however, even Republican politicians who privately shared
the elite’s contempt for the masses knew enough to keep it to themselves and
managed to fake some appreciation for ordinary workers. At this point, however,
the party’s contempt for the working class is apparently too complete, too
pervasive to hide.
The point is that what people are now calling the Boca Moment wasn’t some
trivial gaffe. It was a window into the true attitudes of what has become a
party of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy, a party that
considers the rest of us unworthy of even a pretense of respect.
