Nuts, Liars, Suckers and the Rube Goldberg Disease

I just heard that Jeff Bezos is worth $100 billion. What is he doing with that net worth? Is he putting it all to work? If not, why not? Ya think if we just gave Jeff another billion he’d put that money right to work putting Americans to work? Why can’t he do that with the $100 billion he already has?

Republicans keep telling us that if they give tax breaks to the wealthy they’ll put it to work, like another billion for Bezos. They have to be either nuts or liars. If you like nuts or liars, that’s your business. But the question is whether we are suckers.

Republicans want us to give the money to people who don’t need it in the hope that now, with even more money they don’t need, they might decide to go to the trouble of running another business and the other business would be somewhere in America and would use people and equipment made in America, or they might find others, like venture capitalists who might use the money in, by and for Americans.

Rube Goldberg, a giant of comedy who died in 1970, certainly would have gone that route in his satirical cartoons. Webster’s New World Dictionary defines Rube Goldberg as “a comically involved, complicated invention, laboriously contrived to perform a simple operation.”

The Rube Goldberg website describes “A Rube Goldberg contraption” as “an elaborate set of arms, wheels, gears, handles, cups and rods, put in motion by balls, canary cages, pails, boots, bathtubs, paddles and live animals – [which] takes a simple task and makes it extraordinarily complicated. He had solutions for How To Get The Cotton Out Of An Aspirin Bottle, imagined a Self-Operating Napkin, and created a Simple Alarm Clock – to name just a few of his hilariously depicted drawings.”

Sound familiar? We could give large tax breaks to people and companies that don’t need it on the prayer that they would use it in helpful, constructive ways, and provide decent, useful jobs to Americans.

Or to get the economy going, nationally or locally, we could just do whatever was needed. Instead of praying someone else would do it with unseemly incentives, we could build roads, bridges, updated electrical grids, schools, universities and water systems, all of which would employ lots of people and provide the resources people and businesses need to function. We might even organize cultural attractions that make places more fun and attractive. Just last week the Times had a front and multipage article on the ways the New York City subways have been starved of maintenance dollars. We’re always postponing maintenance but what do we get for that – paying the rich more for the privilege of being their patrons?

People who tell you that we have to give tax breaks to people who have money lying around that they already don’t know what to do with are either Rube Goldberg creations, nuts or liars. If you like nuts, OK. If you like liars, that’s your business. But the question is whether we are suckers.

— This commentary was broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, November 28, 2017.