By David K. Shipler
Somewhere
between the reverence for private business and the excoriation of capitalism
there must be a middle ground where the virtues of free enterprise are
recognized and its menaces are contained. Finding that territory of moderation
seems especially difficult today, as President Trump and the Republican-led
Congress move to unchain corporations from the taxes and the regulations that
protect social justice, consumer interests, worker safety, and the environment.
Meanwhile, the incipient revolution against corporate villainy, now led by Senators
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, remains alive but marginal.
So Washington,
for the moment at least, has a government of, by, and for the corporate elite,
which was hardly enthusiastic about the Trump candidacy. That is the irony of Trump:
a rich entrepreneur stirring up resentment toward powerful business, a splashy
spendthrift touting himself as the voice of the “forgotten” struggling blue-collar
class, which still approves of him after a year of getting nothing except
slogans and wishful thinking.
The wishful
thinking relies on an old myth about business, which has two main parts. First,
the notion that reduced corporate taxes will liberate cash to flow to workers,
in the form of higher salaries and employment rates, has been a matter of
debate for decades between conservatives and liberals. Despite the paucity of
evidence from the past, conservatives insist that liberating private companies
will boost the overall economy by enhancing capital investment. Liberal
economists, by contrast, tend to see the gains going to the wealthy stockholders. Companies are expected to increase dividends and buy back shares, which will raise
stock prices.
