Requiring Paid Sick Leave - Republicans have some valid points - but...

Last year California enacted legislation that requires every employer in the State, even little guys like me with just a couple employees, to provide a couple days of paid sick leave to employees each year (it takes effect July 1).

The Democrats who pushed it through argued how hard it was for employees to balance family and health needs with jobs, that people couldn't afford to take time off to go to the Doctor, or could get fired for taking a sick kid to emergency.  Working people problems, some perhaps overblown, but still real issues.

Republicans argued vociferously that this bill would be a job killer, that it would make California less competitive with other states, that it would drive employers out of the state.  

Republicans are right, all that will happen to some degree.  When I look at my business balance sheet it is a problem to build in that extra cost.

But, for me, Republican policies of the last 30 years are the reason we have a poor solution to the problem rather than a better solution and they offer no alternative to the not very good Democratic solution but the status quo.

The biggest problem facing our economy is inequality.  Ever since Republicans took control of the economic agenda in the early 1980's our government has been about cutting taxes on the wealthy, cutting the power of labor unions and cutting regulation on business.   The end result has been a rise in income inequality over the last 30 years to the point a very small percentage of people own most of the wealth in this country.

Rich people don't really buy that much.  Sure they have to do something with their money, so they buy and sell art, and houses and expensive cars, and stocks and sell businesses back and forth, for ever increasing prices.  So they drive up the price of investable assets.  But it is regular people that don't have all they need that really drive a consumer economy.   After 30 years of trickle down economics, regular people just don't have that much money to spend.  It was all masqueraded in the late 1990's and early 2000 because people were borrowing against their home equity to spend for things they couldn't actually afford, and some are doing that again, but that path is not sustainable.

So each year the economists tell us this is the year the economy is finally going to turn around, but then it doesn't.  Because all the wealth in this country is in the hands of people who have no real need for consumer products, so there is no increasing demand to feed business growth. 

As a country our economy has continued to grind forward because of debt financed spending coupled with the fact we still can sell stuff to other countries, so big international businesses have been doing fine, but smaller businesses and main street businesses are shriveling up and disappearing.  New business starts ups are at the lowest point in decades because there isn't consumer demand to support a new business.  (Unless you are a tech start-up aiming at a world wide consumer base)

But Republicans are still believers that trickle down economics is the answer.   On California's sick pay law the only alternative the Republican opposition would offer was tax breaks to businesses to make it economically beneficial to provide sick leave.  Basicly their solution was to use public funds to buy cooperation from business by helping their bottom line.  

That's the Republican way these days.  There is always political hay to be made in criticizing what the other guy is doing, and lots of pitfalls in actually proposing things and opening yourself up to criticism.  But lately Republicans seem to feel like once they have figured out a way to criticize their job is done.  They just want to maintain the status quo.  If powerful business interests want to pay people peanuts so they can take home millions of dollars a year, well, we should thank them for creating jobs. 

Slaveholders on the plantations in the south created a lot of jobs but eventually we figured out there was something morally repugnant about their business model.

Sure our current system is vastly better than the slave economy of the south, but we are still stuck in that historical philosophical rut where we fail to address the fact many of the people most driven to acquire wealth are most interested in relative wealth, not absolute wealth.  They want to set themselves apart by being way richer and more powerful than everyone else.  So if their activities make most folks poorer, even if they also end up somewhat poorer in the long run, they are even more rich in comparison.  Greater equality is exactly what they don't want.  (There are psychological studies to support this notion by the way). 

Economic data, and simple common sense, suggests that the way to sustain long term economic growth in a free market is by setting rules that spread the wealth broadly across society.  When we allow wealth to concentrate new ideas and youthful energy tend to stagnate because the wealthy and powerful are interested only in their agenda and many creative people have no outlet for their talent.  

For those of us who think greater equality is the better choice there is a little to offer from the Republican party.  Seeking greater income equality doesn't seem to be a notion that fits anywhere in the Republican rear view mirror view of reality.