Debunking “The Case For Common Good Capitalism,” By Senator Marco Rubio

Senator Marco Rubio recently seemed to be possessed by the spirit of Huey Long — and that’s not a good thing for either him or us. While catholic traditionalists are worried about Mexicans voting socialists, they’re trying to make us more socialist.

I could go on with these all day.

Yes, Marco Rubio has “Common Good Capitalism.” Because when I think of someone who understands the common good — I think Marco Rubio.

I’m just going to do a blind read and respond as I go to his article on the topic in National Review. Here’s what the article states:

In 1891, amid the disruption of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of socialism, Pope Leo XIII wrote that the ultimate goal for any society should be to “make men better” by providing people the opportunity to attain the dignity that comes from hard work, ownership, and raising a family.

Yeah, here’s the issue with quoting Leo XIII — basically his entire papacy was spent defending his own existence from socialists. Using his economic opinions as evidence of anything suffer from the same issues as using Bismarck or FDR. It’s based on this nonsense idea we have to become socialists to stop socialism.

Basically, Rubio is going full FDR without even realizing it. Great start to a pro-capitalism article, Senator.

And who says those “make men better”? Should someone like Charles Manson have had a family? Was Casey Anthony made better off for having a daughter? I could go on — but long story short, not everyone is made to have children.

“The labor of the working class — the exercise of their skill, and the employment of their strength in the workshops of trade is indispensable,” Pope Leo argued. “Justice demands that the interests of the working classes be carefully watched over by the administration, so that they who contribute so largely to the community may themselves share in the benefits which they create.”

This sounds like Bernie Sanders! Also, have you ever noticed populist “sharing,” is always based on taking from the rich? If only one friend of yours is sharing his things, this isn’t based on sharing — at that point he’s just giving you gifts.

What makes this society possible is the rights of both workers and businesses, but also their obligations to each other. Put another way, businesses have a right to make a profit, but they also have an obligation to reinvest those profits productively for the benefit of the workers and the greater society.

Who defines what counts as “productively for the benefit of the workers and the greater society”? This is just a blanket statement meant to sound good without actually saying anything.

Also, if Rubio knew anything about capitalism he’d know they have already done this. People only buy things if they benefit them in some way — even if that way seems counterproductive or odd to the rest of us. It’s as I’ve pointed out a number of times before, if you take any and all forms of populism down just one level, you get pure individualism.

Similarly, workers have a right to share in the benefits of the profits they helped create.

Okay, so how about instead of a fixed pay rate they get a share in the company and have to fund all off years themselves? Because that’s the only way you could have a system similar to what Rubio is talking about while also having it so most companies don’t go bankrupt.

People chose to work for companies instead of starting one of there own for one reason — it’s easier. As such, they take a job that requires less risk and therefore promises them less pay than they theoretically could get. This is not a hard thing to understand.

In the economy Pope Leo described, workers and businesses are not competitors for their share of limited resources, but partners in an effort that strengthens the entire nation.

This is just the zero-sum fallacy. Hey, you ever notice these right-wing populists make the same mistakes as the socialists?

This describes the kind of economy most of us want today, as well as the economy during our nation’s most prosperous and secure moments.

Funny his article opened with Leo XIII criticizing the Industrial Revolution — the time in American History where living standards increased the most by far. Were we secure during the pre-industrial era of seven day work weeks and sixteen hour days?

Rubio refuses to give examples of what time period he’s referring to in the above statement. As such, I have no idea when he’s talking about. Was in the Eisenhower era — you know, “What’s good for GM is good for America”?

But it doesn’t describe the economy we actually have today.

You never proved we had it in the first place Marco.

Large corporations have become vehicles for shareholders and banks to assert claims to cash flows, rather than engines of productive innovation. Over the past 40 years, the financial sector’s share of corporate profits increased from about 10 to nearly 30 percent.

And how much has wealth overall increased? GDP per capita has consistently gone up since the end of the Great Depression. The average person is making more today then they ever have before — and yes, this has to include people you don’t like.

The share of profits sent to shareholders increased by 300 percent. This occurred while investment of those profits back into the companies’ workers — and future — dropped 20 percent.

Source please.

Last year, corporations on the S&P 500 spent more than a trillion dollars buying back their own shares. These are the largest corporations in the world collectively saying, “We don’t have anything to invest in.”

According to Investopedia, this year started with $23 trillion being passed around in the S&P 500. This means Rubio is worried about 4.3% of the money leading to some massive shift, which is simply can’t. Big numbers are scary sounding, but that’s just a drop in the bucket compared to the bigger number that’s actually being put into the market.

This is what it looks like when, as Pope Francis warned, “finance overwhelms the real economy.”

Didn’t “finance,” just mean “Jews” in his time? Actually, here’s a quote from the Pope Marco leaves out:

Hence from all we have hitherto said, it is clear beloved Catholics that we cannot approve the opinions with some, Protestants, Jews, and other Heretics, comprise under the head of Americanism.-Pope Leo XIII

Well what do you know?

The result has been an economy whose architecture has been rapidly transformed. Despite three years of robust economic growth, millions are unable to find dignified work; they feel forgotten and left behind. We are left with a society with which no one is happy.

What separates dignified work from normal work exactly? Are fast food workers just less worth wild since someone who works in a factory according to the Senator?

Also, why is it the job of the government to make me happy? And if it is, why is work the best way. To quote Shane Killian “If maximum happiness if the only thing that matters, why not just hand out free heroine?”

These Americans are victims of an economic re-ordering that Pope Benedict described as the dominance of “largely speculative” financial flows, detached from real production.

What counts as real production? What is fake production? You’re just jumping from one un-defined term to another and hoping nobody notices. The place of the reader is just to read your article, use your jargon, and drop your name whenever possible.

The repercussions have extended far beyond the economy: a collapse in churchgoing and community institutions; a decline in marriage, childbirth, and life expectancy; and an increase in drug dependency, suicides, and other deaths of despair.

You have yet to prove no only that any of these things are bad but that they are happening for the reasons you claim and that government can or should fix them.

Also, what is a “death of despair”? And if you want to talk about suicide, well suicide among chronic pain sufferers went up when the Obama administration moved opium to a Schedule two drug. Where are you on that?

We have condemned the next generation of Americans to be the first to enter adulthood worse off than their parents.

That’s still 2nd best in human history!

Diagnosing the problem is something we should be able to achieve across the political spectrum, though even that seems challenging at times. Ultimately, deciding what the government should do about it must be the core question of our politics.

You forgot to prove first that the government could do anything to fix this, let alone that is should. You just jumped to step three and called it “the core question”!

We must start by rejecting the false choice our politics has offered us for almost three decades. First, our financialized economy is the result of policy choices lawmakers have made in the past.

We live in a society.

And restoring a balance between the obligations and rights of the private sector and working Americans will require the attention of lawmakers today.

“A balance between the obligations and rights?” So you’re just going to openly violate the rights of some in the private sector?

Also, why aren’t people employed by people in the private sector also in the private sector? Why are working Americans not part of the private sector, is what I’m getting at? This is almost class warfare.

What we need to do is restore common-good capitalism: a system of free enterprise wherein workers fulfill their obligation to work and enjoy the resultant benefits, and businesses enjoy their right to make a profit and reinvest enough to create high-productivity jobs, which is what I mean by dignified work for Americans.

What is a high-productivity job? What is a low-productivity job? Can there be medium-productivity jobs? If every job is high-productivity, wouldn’t they all be average-productivity?

Common-good capitalism also means recognizing that what the market determines is most efficient may not be best for America.

So jobs created by IPhones aren’t high-productivity?

For example, we’ve allowed ourselves to become almost completely dependent on China for rare-earth minerals and done nothing to further our ability to provide them for ourselves. That’s why I have filed legislation to support investment in this critical sector.

For the record, the only story I could find about rare-earth minerals in the United States was one from June of this year saying some might be in Wyoming. I think there’s a recent no one is investing in it.

It is also possible to reform the Small Business Administration to reinvigorate the legacy of business innovation that delivered Americans to the Moon 50 years ago.

And how much benefit did the average American get from that?

Common-good capitalism also means recognizing fundamental shifts in our culture.

Capitalism is an economic system, not a cultural one. Rubio, you’re just bad at this.

The market may not account for the benefits our country receives from parental engagement. But common-good capitalism does. That is why I’ve worked to expand the federal per-child tax credit, as well as proposed creating an option for paid parental leave.

We have more economic benefits for having children today then at any point in human history! Does Marco think the recent cavemen had children was because they would get a tax cut? How about other species? A bluefin tuna can have 10 million eggs a year, do they get tax cuts for that? These programs haven’t worked so far, what makes you think they’re going to work now?

Also, if you want more work, paid parental leave is the last thing you want. All that does is cause employers to not hire people (usually women, because it tends to only be maternity leave but if it’s for both parents this still applies) of child bearing age because them having a child could put a serious strain on the company. You can’t just rewrite the laws of economics because your religion or culture war demands it.

We must remember that our nation does not exist to serve the interests of the market; the market exists to serve our nation.

1. It already does, you just don’t like the people that make up the nation who it is also serving.
2. What does this even mean? How can you tell if the market is serving the nation? How does it serve the nation? Is the free market suppose to make me breakfast in the morning?
3. Why does the only thing in our life have to be the economy? Shouldn’t other factors be considered just as important as if something helps or harms a system you don’t even like in the first place?

And the most effective benefit the market can provide is the creation of dignified work.

Still have no idea what makes work dignified, by the way.

Dignified work allows people to give their time, talent, and treasure to our churches, our charities, and community groups.

What if they don’t want to?

It makes it easier to form strong families in stable communities and reinvigorates those institutions that bind us together as a people.

How do you define a family as strong — you know what, he’s never going to define these terms, just forget it.

Because when you live with, worship with, serve with, or share a community with someone, you know him or her as a whole person. You may not agree with the person’s politics, but you have other commonalities that bind you together.

Why can’t I disagree with someone over religion and still be apart of a community? You specifically mentioned churches, so I can disagree with someone over politics but disagreeing over religion crosses a line?

But when your neighbors are strangers, and all you know about your fellow countrymen is who they voted for, it is much easier to see them as the other.

Does this article ever end?

In 1968, Robert Kennedy decried the deep cultural sickness of his era that was “discouraging initiative, paralyzing will and action, and dividing Americans from one another, by their age, their views, and by the color of their skin.”

But you’re doing the same thing in regards to class, location, and indirectly religion. Why is it a cultural sickness to divide America, but America should also be made up of small isolated communities with little to no contact with the outside world? Or what happened in the times Marco is talking about in a positive light.

As Kennedy did in 1968, we must accept the indivisible tie between culture and economics, so that once again we can reclaim the motto on our nation’s seal: E pluribus unum — out of many, one.

That was in reference to thirteen colonies (the many) becoming United States (one). Why do you think we’re called the United States?

If and how we resolve this will not just define 21st-century America; it will define the century itself. Our future is not ours alone to decide. In China, we are confronted with a near-peer competitor on the global stage.

China is in an economic bubble that is currently collapsing and is nowhere near as big of a treat to the United States as people like you make it out to be.

China is undertaking a patient effort to reorient the global order to reflect its values and its interests at the expense of ours — a global order in which the key industries and good jobs are based in China and controlled by them; in which the principles of freedom of religion and speech are replaced by what the Chinese call “societal harmony”

How is that different from what you’re doing? You want freedom and individualism to be replaced with what is good for the many — or social harmony. The only difference I can see is that one of you is open about being a communist!

and in which the right to elect your own leaders and voice dissent is replaced by a totalitarian system that criminalizes protest and imprisons minorities.

I’ve already shown how ungodly hypocritical this is, right?

An America in which no one is held back by his or her gender, skin color, or ethnic origin is no longer just morally right; it’s a national imperative.

Then endorse the free market which can create such a thing!

For, in the words of the late sociologist Robert Bellah, the American tradition — the “transcendent goal” of our politics — renders sacred our “obligation to carry out God’s will on Earth.”

What about the millions of Americans who don’t believe in a God or believe in a different one then you do? And if Rubio the Catholic wants to talk about American traditionalism, let’s just leave it at his religion wouldn’t be treated the best back in the day either.

That is the task accepted by each generation before us. We are the beneficiaries of their sacrifices and achievements.

Unless they were non-Catholics. Which would be the vast majority of the American population for all of history.

Now we must decide whether to accept the challenge of our time and author the next chapter in the story of the nation that changed the world.

And we end where we began: With nonsense.