A bar survives as a small business because people come in
and buy drinks. How does that happen? Well, it might be because people sense a
hip vibe, it might be because the beer is cheap, it might be because all the
Yankees fans in the neighborhood have decided to watch the tragic series
against the Tigers together on one particular flat-screen TV, it might be
because the bar gives out that terrific goat cheese thing at happy hour, it
might be because everybody knows your name. Any of these and more might make a
bar successful.
None of these have anything to do with tax policy. Or
regulation. Instead, they have to do with the existence of customers—i.e.,
people.
So if you’re talking about “creating jobs” or “helping the
middle class,” you ought to be thinking about people. Why did the rabbi and the
priest walk into a bar? They both had enough money in their pockets to splurge
on a cocktail or pitcher of beer or glass of Bordeaux or whatever it is clergy
order when they’re in a joke. And that money came from a job, in their case, a
job with an organization that pays no taxes.
The tattered idea that lowering tax rates for business will
increase hiring is absurd. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia pays $0 in tax, and
yet closed
St. Mary of the Assumption, along with some smaller parishes and many
schools, this past summer. That means not only an out-of-work pastor, but teachers,
secretaries, janitors, clerks and administrators all losing their jobs. The
Roman Catholic Church’s taxes couldn’t get any lower; what the enterprise
lacked was parishioners—i.e., customers—i.e., people.
And regulation? Well, The Catholic Church, along with
other religious institutions, is
exempt from many regulations, particularly the ones that promote equality
and fairness by forbidding discrimination. For example, in Iowa, a business is
not allowed to hire or fire someone “on
the basis of age, race, creed, color, sex, national origin, religion, or
disability,” unless it is "[a]ny bona fide religious institution or its
educational facility, association, corporation or society.”
But most regulation exists to keep people from harm, not
from injustice. Rules against serving toxic food or dumping slag in the
drinking water or selling cars that don’t have functional braking systems are
good for people—i.e., customers—and, indirectly, for businesses, because they
keep customers—i.e., people—alive. The reason bars have to get liquor licenses
is to protect those customers—i.e., people—from a substance that can be very
dangerous if not properly handled. A dead customer will not boost revenues. A
dead customer won’t enhance that hip vibe. A dead customer won’t bring his
friends in next April, when the Yankees’ chances look pretty good again.
O burdensome regulations! O burdensome taxes! In Mitt
Romney’s Bar & Grill, he’s pouring a secret jobs potion that’s going to
jump-start our economy without even a sideways glance at the actual human
beings behind economic transactions like ordering a Fuzzy Navel. The only
people in his post-Citizens United
wo
rldview are corporations, who will pay less tax and follow fewer rules. To
make up for that generous gift, he’ll slash “wasteful” government spending on
such whatchacallems as:
- teachers
- inspectors
- auditors
- analysts
- secretaries
- scientists
- researchers
Prepare to get fired, bureaucratic slackers, at which point,
you’ll cease to be a customer—i.e., person. But don’t worry, that small
business called St. Mary’s, just down the block from your out-of-work ass is
sure to use its windfall tax break and freedom from regulation to hire more
priests
and nuns, folks who don’t need the contraception not covered in their
health insurance. Ask your parents to send you to Divinity School. You’ll clean
up in that libertarian dreamscape, that model of trickle-down economics, that
no-tax, low-regulation utopia where the secret jobs potion flows freely through
every empty pew.