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Like anyone with right-leaning views, economic conservatives feign logical consistency but can’t seem to stop shooting themselves in the foot when presented with new information.

Let’s review the standard fiscal conservative story:
Competition brings out the best in business owners. Corporations have no incentive to overcharge customers because, if they do, those customers will buy from a cheaper competitor. Corporations have no incentive to underpay effective low- and mid-level employees because, if they do, those employees will be hired by a more ambitious competitor.

You’d be hard pressed to get a libertarian or wingnut to admit that corporations will molest consumers and employees to suck up every last dime and pass it to the top of the pyramid… unless it helps them argue for cutting taxes, it appears.

Jane Galt thinks she’s got this whole economy business figured out. Way back in 2002 she argued for the abolition of the corporate income tax, and now that the CBO claims 70% of that tax is shouldered by domestic labor, Jane’s busting out an enormous “I told you so.” She even quotes herself. Isn’t that adorable?

Of course, what she quotes from her 2002 piece is rather intriguing:

When you put a tax on wages, such as social security or the unemployment tax, the employer doesn’t say, “oh, well, profits dropped 15% this year; better tell Merrill Lynch to issue a ‘sell’ rating” — they pay their employees less, both to lower the tax burden and to recover the lost profits. They hire fewer employees, because each employee is now more expensive. This costs real people money. When you up the corporate tax, either the employees pay, because the firm can’t afford as many of them; the customers pay, because the firms have to raise their prices to cover the taxes; or the shareholders pay because dividends are lower and the company is worth less.

But now I’m confused. Won’t paying people less cost them the best employees? Won’t hiring fewer people leave them at a competitive disadvantage? Won’t charging more for the product leave them behind hungrier competition? Why wouldn’t a corporation just reduce its executive bonus packages and the like?

For Jane’s tax arguments to make sense, she has to admit that executives and capital owners bleed everyone else dry before touching their own income. But that doesn’t jive with the fun stories they like to tell about competition enforcing customer and employee protection, does it?

After all, if a corporation’s profits rise, wouldn’t a conservative argue that, to stay competitive, that corporation would lower costs to consumers, pay their good employees more, or hire more good employees at a fair wage? Why, then, if profits are cut by a corporate income tax, would the first people to suffer be employees and consumers?

If Jane thinks about it, her arguments necessarily mean that abolishing the tax won’t do a damn thing for the employees currently shouldering the burden. She’s now admitted that the workforce and the consumer base are pawns of the corporate fatcats, and if those are the first people burdened by profit loss, then they’ll also be the last to be rewarded by profit gains.

Of course, liberals and progressives know full well the workforce and/or customer base will almost always suffer to keep capital owners in the lap of luxury. Just fire up a cigar at the country club with CEOs from Wal-Mart and Exxon-Mobil to learn a few lessons about working over the typical American.

The CBO numbers merely reflect the ugly nature of corporate business practices. I’m deeply amused that a conservative pointed them out and made my arguments about corporate behavior for me.

Sadly, we can’t rely on the conservative to draw the proper conclusion, but that’s nothing new, is it?

A few days ago, Jessica at Feministing posted the latest in advanced menu technology — the sex-based pricing model:

This could be the tip of the iceberg. Now that society has deemed it okay to charge people different prices based on their genitals, who knows what we’ll be paying for items soon…

Tampons

Women’s price: $7.99/box
Men’s price: Free

I have no use for tampons. I don’t see why I should be charged any money for them at all. There’s definitely no way I should be charged as much as women, who have sole possession of the hole in which these items belong.

Then again, I suppose men everywhere would be forced to buy tampons for women, which is second only to having your nuts ripped off in terms of emasculation.

[Total aside: the "buying tampons is awkward" story never made sense to me. Obviously, the man isn't using them. He's clearly buying them for a woman. This implies he's got a girlfriend, which means he's having regular sex with someone. Last I checked, this was cause for bragging, not shaming. Is it supposed to be embarrassing that his sex partner gets periods? Because if your partner can't have a period, maybe he's a guy, and I thought being gay was also supposed to be frowned on in the macho community. This is all very confusing.]

(more…)

No, that’s not an invitation. [Thanks for your interest, though.]

In his commentary on the insanity of repealing the estate tax, Robert Reich addressed the myth of upward mobility in America today:

Thirty years ago, the richest 1 percent owned less than a fifth of America’s wealth. Now, according to recent report by the Fed Reserve Board, they own over a third. Not since the days of the Robber Barons of the 19th Century have we seen this much wealth concentrated in so few hands.

A month or so ago, a lot of folks got into this issue thanks to Tom Hertz’s eye-opening study, Understanding Mobility in America, in which he pointed out “children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of reaching the top 5 percent of the income distribution, versus children of the rich who have about a 22 percent chance.”

So it’s not just bad for the hard-working low-income American — according to Reich, it’s getting worse, and not by a small margin. If the piece of pie you’re getting seems smaller, it’s probably because the part of the pie we all have to split continues to be devoured by the monetarily obese.

The funny thing is that the robber baron era was fueled by monopolistic corporate greed. Clearly, [Southwestern Bell] we’re past all [Wal-mart] of that in [Time Warner] this modern technological era [Microsoft] of digital [Halliburton] democracy. I wonder what our problem is…

Anyway, Reich points out that Uncle Sam will lose out on a trillion bucks over 10 years without the estate tax. I say if the gub’ment doesn’t want the money, it should simply redistribute it to anyone who isn’t in that top 5% of the income distribution. I could use an extra $4000 or so, howzabout you? Hell, I bet the robber barons would get most of it back anyway, but at least my phone, cable, and underwear would be comped by Paris Hilton’s parents and their friends.