The GOP Litany continues to hold the un-Christian position that the needy should not be helped, so for instance no unemployment insurance benefit extension should exist. I hope I'm wrong, but I do not expect it to even be voted on in the House, and expect a filibuster in the Senate. A picture is worth a thousand words: since I’m using one this will be a short essay.
Instead of helping the needy, the GOP holds that our tax dollars should reward the deserving – the Mighty Job Creators – and Lo, There Will Be Jobs. Can we check that with actual data? Conveniently the St. Louis Fed has a lot of its data in easily plottable form, or one can download the data in Excel format and plot to one’s heart’s content.
Plotting Corporate Profits After Tax Since 2003 and Total Nonfarm Employees together, if the GOP were correct we’d see a significant and substantial correlation. I have done that exercise, using an index where 2007 values = 100%. The blue line is profits; the red line is employment.
Despite a growing population, total employment is where it was in 2007. Profits, however, are up 60%. Ergo, the GOP is FOS on this issue, and since Job Creators are not creating jobs, we should raise corporate taxes and put people to work on infrastructure and public service.