February 11, 2019
Of course, he wouldn’t do that. Steven Rattner isn’t concerned about the hundreds of billions (perhaps more than $1 trillion) that the government redistributes upward each year in the form of patent and copyright rents. These rents, which come to close to $400 billion annually for prescription drugs alone, are a direct and intended result of the monopolies that the government gives companies and individuals as a way of paying for innovation and creative work.
But Steven Rattner isn’t concerned about this enormous burden on our children, which makes folks like Bill Gates incredibly rich. Instead, he is worried about the much smaller burden of the interest on the debt, which currently nets out (after deducting money rebated by the Federal Reserve Board) to around $200 billion a year or 1.0 percent of GDP. He also is not concerned about the fact that the income of our children may be $1 trillion a year less, which has the same effect on living standards as paying another $1 trillion a year in higher taxes ($3,000 per person), because of the austerity that people like him demanded in the years following the Great Recession.
For some reason, no matter how much damage these people cause and how little sense their arguments make, we are still supposed to take their views seriously. Any ideas why?
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