The obvious question is whether you can draw any line, any connection between the tax breaks they’re getting, ostensibly designed to encourage capital expenditures, and what they’re actually doing. And it’s just impossible to know.
But isn’t this the point of capital? To accumulate more capital? Why would investing in the growth of labor matter? If capital can grow itself without an increase in technology, labor, and material goods, isn’t it proof of its own validity and success? Isn’t the idea of growth of capital to minimize labor, as it labor serves only in the support its growth and therefore, to the extent it is needed, a necessary expenditure for its success? An investment in labor and the growth of tangible industry is a waste of capital. It uses capital— expends it— expenditure is the opposite of growth. The reign of the capitalist is based on the suppression of labor and the needs of labor overall. The capitalist cannot deliver on the promise of tax cuts as a means to greater societal prosperity for all because the capitalist exists only in direct opposition to full, let alone fair, employment. Capital relies on a reserve army of labor, and in this labor that is alway marginally dissatisfied and ready to move to the next thing. Never too comfortable in its role, labor is transitory, it doesn’t expect to grow into a career— it doesn’t expect to cash in on its shares— that’s for the capitalist. Accumulation is always-already for the capitalist. Investment in industrial development—modernizing the means of production, if you will—is thereby looked at with the same disdain. Investing in upgrades that make labor more efficient is viewed through a cost-benefit analysis model that asks, “will capital grow (more than labor benefits)?” Making labor even incrementally better is not worthwhile to capital unless it helps the bottom line. Making the product—the goods or services delivered by the capital firm—is not worthwhile unless it helps the bottom line. Labor and consumers, both expenses to capital, can be avoided when capital is allowed to reinvest directly in itself and, because of this, it is not “impossible” to know what capital is doing with the revenue freed up in these tax breaks. Capital is simply, and very logically, reinvesting in itself to avoid tangible expenditures, breeding the illusion that capital itself is a business expenditure— as we say, you have to spend money to make money.
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