Once upon an attention span, a student of mine at a community college near you wrote a paper about a vacation with his parents in Mexico.
This was for an assignment that I liked to give at the very start of a freshman writing class, something personal and descriptive that put students in the role of outside observers. All while giving me a sense of their natural, story-telling voices.
At the time, I was frequently writing columns for the local paper about driving and riding trains cross-country with my daughter, so I had plenty of examples to show. Most helpful were paragraphs from my wordy first drafts placed next to the edited finished product.
Most results were relatively close to home–White Mountains, Cape Cod, skiing trips to Vermont, long weekends in NYC and Montreal–but near or far, the enjoyable subject succeeded in relaxing the writing process which most of them feared.
Freshman writing is, after all, the class that everybody has to take, and nobody wants to take.
The trip to Mexico began much like the others with preparation and excitement, a few glitches in departure, and great relief upon arrival. After that, it was all knew to me, but since the student wrote well, I felt the pulse and heard the music of Mexico City–and the exhilaration of the drive his family took into the country-side.
He described people working in fields, tending gardens, feeding animals, caring for children in humble villages and isolated homes in such detail that I saw them. I still see them.
Although I must admit that I may still see them only because of the word he used for them: Pee-ons. By that time I was immune to such slapstick–though understandable–mistakes. Quoting the well-worn “Serenity Prayer,” one young woman began, “God grant me the soil around me…”
Still, I couldn’t help but chuckle at his need to explain it: “They are called ‘pee-ons’ because the rich people pee on them.”
Thirty years later I’d be more inclined to plagiarize than correct him.
As I write, I await the publication of my next column any day now wondering if the editor will change my use of the phrase “tinkle down” back to the obvious reference to what is commonly known as trickle down economics.
Ronald Reagan made a mantra of it when he campaigned in 1980. In theory, steep tax cuts and deregulation would allow American businesses to make investments bound to create more jobs and perhaps raise wages. With all that wealth left on top, most would surely “trickle down” and multiply.
In practice, top execs and shareholders pocketed the money while moving operations overseas for a labor force that works for far less.
The trend continued through Bush 41 despite a bust in the bubble, and Clinton did little to stop it before the Bush/Cheney Administration slashed what few safeguards remained in place and rolled the American economy over a cliff in 2008. Anyone paying attention could see it coming, but the American public kept falling for the seductive sales pitch: Trickle down economics.
Obama could have let the scandal-ridden financial institutions fail, or temporarily nationalized them while putting several CEOs & CFOs on a path to well-deserved jail cells. He did neither. Instead, he bailed them out and let them continue calling the shots with lenient requirements for repayment. While the CEOs & CFOs remained on top, pocketing yet more raises and bonuses, America recovered so slowly, albeit steadily, that the Republicans, infused with the rise of the hot-blooded Tea Party, made the case again.
As always, their genius was to keep referring to “tax cuts” without ever specifying that they were actually targeting corporate taxes–leading the public to believe that they were targeting all taxes. By 2016, Republicans were again claiming that jobs would be saved, more created, and wages raised.
Again, with the help of the Electoral College in states most ravaged by Reaganomics, the American public fell for it. Now, after four years of Trump, much of America resembles a feudal kingdom with an elite aristocracy served by an oversized–and therefore expendable–peasantry. A CEO whose delivery business raked huge profits during the pandemic, thought to be a Democrat no less, is a leading voice in the resistance to raise the minimum wage–all while building a 470-plus-foot yacht complete with small “service boats” and a helipad. As restrictions lift, “essential workers” are realizing the flattery of “essential” was never intended to last beyond the pandemic or mean anything more than “sucker.”
To his credit, Joe Biden’s economic proposals aim at restoring an American middle class. And a glance at the numbers should make any reasonable person wonder why any Republican–or any Democrat still gullible enough to think Republicans have any interest in bipartisanship–would object. As Heather Cox Richardson measured West Virginia’s Democratic Senator last night:
[Joe] Manchin appears to be blaming the person calling the fire department, rather than the arsonist, and then saying the firefighters need to work with the guys holding the gasoline cans and matches.
When Obama left office, the corporate tax rate was 35%. Trump slashed it to 21%. By that token, Biden’s call for 28% is a 50/50 compromise at a time when the nation is reeling from the results of deregulation and tax cuts compounded by a pandemic.
Calling for investment in infrastructure, education, and the environment, Biden’s plans are comparable to an irrigation project that brings water directly into the soil and spreads it throughout the plot. Instead of waiting for anything coming down, growth would be up and across like August corn in a well-tended field.
But don’t hold your breath for what only the gullible still call “bipartisanship.” Republicans oppose this not because they don’t think it will work, but because they know it will work. Proof of that was FDR’s New Deal. For the sake of their donors, Republicans want to dry that field out and keep it barren so that they might offer, yet again, the trickle down delusion of more jobs and better wages.
Republicans are Lucy with the football. Anyone who believes them is Charlie Brown doomed to fall, again and again, on his ass.
Before I set him straight, my student who went to Mexico told me that his father was the source of his “pee-on” observation, and we shared a laugh when I admitted that his dad was my kind of guy.
Thirty years later, I’m thinking that his father–and the kid himself who proved to be a spirited smart-ass who reminded me of myself–was on to something.
Just as “essential” was never intended as a permanent measure of any worker’s value, “trickle down” was never meant as an honest description of any plan. Economics? Suckernomics would be more like it. It has always been an inside joke for Republicans who increasingly count on the support of those who pay little attention to what corporate tax cuts do–or who do not have the attention span to recall its previous failures.
Moreover, they increasingly count on support from those who fall for simple, seductive phrases. If words were brushstrokes on a canvas, “Trickle Down Economics” would be a detail of “Make America Great Again.”
Closer to the truth of America today is what my student wrote of Mexico: The rich piss on the rest of us. Trickle might as well be a typo for tinkle.
For now I just hope that my editor doesn’t think that the typo is mine.
-30-
Mouth of the River 