If Corporations Are On Strike, Then Bust Them

“Job creators are essentially on strike."

Those words, intended to strike fear in the hearts of the country, while also delivered with a reminder that what will stabilize the country is hope and optimism, were delivered by House Speaker John Boehner in a speech today. 

Boehner named what liberals have been saying for the last two years: that businesses aren’t hiring on purpose.  Now, he is making the tired claim that it has to do with “economic uncertainty” which has always begged the question about when the mythical “economic certainty” actually occurred in the modern era.  And yet, he is still making the claim.  Boehner’s analogy is pitch perfect…for Democrats.  It’s simple: he opened the foundation for the Republican position by using labor terms.  The pieces are there:

• Republicans have long used union-busting as an excuse for economic growth.
• They worship President Ronald Reagan’s ghost for busting the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization.
• Boehner, perhaps unintentionally, has invoked a vision of wealthy, multinational corporations as unions.

So if corporations are on strike, then how about busting them!  Here’s how:

1. Have the country strike competitive fear into the hearts of corporations by going toe-to-toe with the banks and energy companies with new public utilities,
2. Hiring scores of workers, proving that corporations aren’t actually job creators,
3. And enforce the communications laws and laws of incorporation that are on the books.

If we are to trust that multinational corporations are the only job creators, that laissez faire economics is the rule, and that open markets are the only way, then let’s actually see how they compete with the government.  Will they innovate and prove us wrong?  Great!  We’ll have jobs!  If they fail, then at least we still have jobs!  This is a win-win situation.

Otherwise, maintaining our current situation by allowing corporations to be “essentially on strike” and doing nothing about it is entirely lose-lose.  Or at least lose-lose for the 99%.  In the “economically uncertain” times of today, the 1% are raking it in.

The pieces are there: who will pick them up?

P.S.  Read the Plum Line's "Two sentences from John Boehner's speech".