This past January a news clip of one of Fox News’ most recognizable talking heads, Tucker Carlson, drew a lot of attention due to the nature of Carlson’s argument and its uncharacteristic quality for a right wing platform like Fox News.
Carlson begins by talking about Mitt Romney’s involvement in a company management firm called Bain Capital, “It invented what is a familiar business strategy. Take over an existing company for a short period of time, cut costs by firing the employees, run up the debt, and move on… This is the private equity model. A ruling class sees nothing wrong with it, it’s how they run the country,” (1:46). Carlson’s critique of the firm mercilessly laying off workers along with his statement, “For generations Republicans have considered it their duty to make the world safe for banking,” (1:57) demonstrates how Carlson acknowledges the emphasis on and protection of neoliberalism in American politics.
However Carlson makes a clear distinction between who the top elites of the country want to see succeed (businesses and markets) and who the average American wants to succeed (their family). Carlson argues that the legacy we leave behind for our children will be determined by whether we decide our happiness and quality of living will be improved by, “Cheaper iPhones or more Amazon deliveries of plastic garbage from China,” (3:22) or, “Dignity, purpose, self control, independence, and above all deep relationships with other people,” (3:49). He recognizes that, “[That is] what our leaders should want for us and would want if they cared. But our leaders don’t care,” (3:57) due to the fact that they are so intertwined in connections with their constituents in the markets. Carlson points to how, “Many social conservatives also consider markets sacrosanct. The idea that families are being crushed by market forces never seems to occur to them,” (5:20) and calls out the hypocrisy in considering the welfare of the markets with more regard than the average workers who enable them to function. Carlson’s main point is that for a healthy country there has to be a symbiotic relationship between families and the economy, without thriving families there won’t be people to support the economy and without a thriving economy families won’t be supported.
Though I could have chosen to write about gentrification, I preferred to closely examine the ways top elites who allow neoliberalism to flourish in America scapegoat the working class against each other based on race, citizenship status, and political and education background. I chose this source because Carlson makes a connection between rural and urban Americans which Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul by Jeremiah Moss also makes between the incoming European immigrants and urban residents of New York City in the 1900s. Carlson notes,
In many ways Rural America now looks like Detroit. This is striking because rural Americans wouldn’t seem to have very much in common with anyone from the inner city. The groups have different cultures, different traditions, different political beliefs. Usually they have different skin colors. Rural people are white conservatives, mostly. Yet the pathologies of modern rural America are familiar to anyone who visited downtown Baltimore in the 1800’s– stunning out-of-wedlock birth rates, high male unemployment, a terrifying drug epidemic. Two different worlds, similar outcomes. How did this happen? You think our ruling class will be deeply interested in knowing the answer, but mostly they are not. They don’t have to be interested. It’s easier to import foreign labor to take the place of native-born Americans who are slipping behind. (6:37)
Moss makes this same distinction of the ruling class in New York when he writes, “Financial rulers wanted a sociological failure, to disrupt the progressive working class of New York, dividing whites from blacks, to protect and expand their own power,” (Moss 4) and, “Interracial, lower-class mixing has always been a threat to the power elites,” (Moss 4). Carlson points out unfair practices that the financial sector continues to implement, “Not all commerce is good. Why is it defensible to loan people money they can’t possibly repay? Or charge them interest that impoverishes them?… If you care about America you ought to oppose the exploitation of Americans whether its happening in the inner city or on Wall Street.”
Maybe the most interesting part of Carlson’s rant is when he challenges the capital gains tax, something I never thought I would see happen on Fox News,
We tax capital at half the rate we tax labor. It’s a sweet deal if you work in finance as many of our richest people do… Our leaders rarely mention any of this. They tell us our multitiered tax code is based on the principles of the free market. Please, it’s based on laws that Congress passed. Laws that companies lobbied for in order to increase their economic advantage. And it worked well for those people, they did increase their economic advantage. But for everyone else there was a big cost. Unfairness is profoundly divisive. (12:01)
This divisiveness is exemplified by Moss when he highlights how elites used race as a factor of social separation in order to move higher in the ranks, “Inciting racial conflict was their [the elites’] go-to method of maintaining control of the lower classes—and expanding their own wealth. As President Johnson said, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you,” (Moss 4). Another dividing factor Moss highlights is politics and education, “Alabama governor George Wallace, further manipulating white working-class fear and resentment, introduced the spurious concept of “reverse discrimination” while recasting the left as the true power elite, a bunch of college-educated dictators who looked down their noses at workers,” (Moss 4). Both race and politics are illustrated in the following from Moss, “Conservative Republicans, beginning in 1964, used anxieties about race and taxes to turn the white working class against poor people of color and the social-democratic New Deal, simultaneously realigning their sympathies with big business and the wealthy elite,” (Moss 4).
What Moss and Carlson both argue, in their own way, is that it does not make sense for the working class to align their politics with the most wealthy power elites as their interests in no way resemble one another’s. The average American worker has a strong interest in the success of their family through employment opportunities available to them and their children. Executives of corporations will always have an interest in increasing the worth of their share in a company, whether or not that means cutting costs nationally through job cuts. Both believe politicians should work in the interest of the common public that elects them rather than those that lobby with their money and power.
It is not often, if ever, that Republican leaning media sources highlight the gross accumulation of wealth and power in the smallest percentage of America’s population. The trend of wealth disparity in America poses harsh strains on the average American family who do not earn what is considered a “living wage” in some states, while top executives’ bonuses could pay off their mortgage and childrens’ college tuitions all at once. In the following tweet, Senator Bernie Sanders illustrates this abysmal gap. It is not often, if ever, that we find Bernie Sanders and Tucker Carlson agreeing.
$25,149.
That's how much the Walton family of Walmart makes in a single MINUTE—more than the average Walmart worker makes in an entire year.
Instead of austerity for working families and the poor, we need austerity for billionaires and massive corporations.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 24, 2019
Questions:
What are some factors that influence Americans to vote against their own interests?
Is there truly a political party that solely works for the good of families rather than their top financial donors?
How can cities become more equitable? On a state level? On a federal level?
