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Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
Because it jumped out at me. It was a clear highlighting of an alleged problem area amongst many vague and/or complex problems. I don't necessarily have a problem with a statistic such as 90% holding 56% - what are these 90% doing with their resources? What value are they providing? How do I know that there's any injustice in that figure at all? A 90% marginal tax rate, on the other hand, is clearly absurd. There's really no way that the government's services for the rich - no matter how disproportionately rendered - make up for that 90% confiscation of income.
Point to an instance of corporate welfare or other such redistribution to the wealthy and I'll condemn it. But reducing the tax burden to a figure still proportionally higher than what anyone else pays - that doesn't cut it.
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FoolThemAll, even with the income tax instituted in 1913....at first, solely a tax on the wealthiest few, and likewise, an inheritance tax begun in 1916, the richest have continued to grow richer in wealth, power, and influence. The political and financial agenda of the rich have been out in "full force" since Jan. 20, 2001. This is their mess....a more moderate, more populist president and senate majority handed these bastards a balanced budget, a trend towards reduced federal government employment and military spending in line with the actual international threat level, which, except for the message of fear pushed so forcefully by the folks who took the reigns that day, really didn't change, if not for the mess in the middle east and the deterioration in foreign relations, that they created, via their over reaction. If the 9/11 attacks had been treated as what they actually were.....crimes....matters for law enforcement to respond to, with of course, help from the DIA and the CIA, where might this country find itself today, compared to the "watch out for the domestic sleeper cell/islamo fascists are bent on destroying our way of life because they hate us for our freedom" that the "new political order" heaped on us, instead.
Now, politically, the will is there to make the wealthy who mostly backed the disaster of total republican party control, pay reparations, and, they're ambition and greed has caused so much damage to the formerly balanced budget vs. revenue scheme in place in Jan. 2001, and to foreign relations and middle east security, that I doubt, even if we taxed them at a 100% capital gains and income rate, the damage that they've sponsored could be undone to Jan. 2001, levels.....
Given the history of federal taxation of the past 90 years, and the disaster brought on us by the elite since Jan., 2001, my sentiments are much more conventional than you, with your firm, "tax the rich fairly" stance, have recognized, up till now. I maintain that when you are rich enough to buy the government and steer it in directions that you see fit....to lower your own taxes, to even entertain the elimination of inheritance taxes, and to fund the possibility, and then continue to sponsor a "collection" like the Bush white house and the Tom "the hammer" Delay congress, and their political agenda, you are rich enough to pay dramatically increased taxes, and you deserve to pay them. "K Street" was a creature of the rich, as well.
When I attempted to update the Milton Eisenhower link in the last quote box in my last post, I visited the page where I got the quote in that box, and I read more. It appears that the ideas I've expressed in this thread parallel the work and the conclusions of the Milton Eisenhower Foundation:
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http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/about.html
The Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation <b>is the international, nonprofit continuation of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the Kerner Riot Commission, after the big city riots of the 1960s) and the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (the National Violence Commission, after the assassinations of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy).</b> We identify, fund, evaluate, build the capacities of and replicate multiple solution ventures for the inner city, the truly disadvantaged, children, youth and families. Through national policy reports, the Foundation communicates what works (and what doesn't) to citizens, media and decision makers. We run a strategic communications school for nonprofit organization staff and youth to help change political will and create action.
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http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/..._economic.html
......The Tax Cuts and Increasing Debt Are Part of the Right's Long-Term Ideology. As articulated by Robert Greenstein, <b>the massive tax cuts are part of a long-term agenda by the radical right in America to reduce public programs that benefit the middle class, working class, and poor. For example, a leading strategist of the radical right has argued for reducing by half the size of the domestic part of the federal government over future decades.</b> As this ideology indicates, the tax cuts and the goal of shrinking the fedomgeral government are being pursued as complementary long-terms strategies. Those pursuing these strategies are patient. They are willing to wait until 2010 to have the estate tax repealed. They are willing to take a long time to squeeze down the federal governomgment, with the squeezing occurring gradually and incrementally but eventually reaching huge proportions.
In 1995, conservative Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich overreached and moved too fast. Today, the extreme right is not repeating that mistake. There is a clear understanding on the part of conservatives that, if one were to publish in the official federal budget today the kind of budget cuts that the recent federal tax cuts ultiomgmately will entail, the tax cuts would have a considerably harder time being passed. So the deep budget cuts are not being published in the federal budget today alongside the tax cuts. This is part of the broader strategy to deceive and mislead the American people and an accommodating mainstream media—in economic policy as in foreign, naomgtional security, and Middle East policy.
<h3>The radical right also is lobbying for still larger tax cuts for the rich. Some want to eliminate all taxes on capital gains, dividends, and other forms of income and move toward a "flat tax." The scheme is to allow deficits to continue to balloon unomgtil Wall Street demands larger and larger domestic spending cuts as a condition for holding down long-term interest rates.......
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....<b>Solutions</b>
Following American public opinion in national polls, alternative economic policy needs to rescind the recent tax cuts for the rich and legislate demand-side tax cuts for the middle class, workers, and the truly disadvantaged—all of whom need a Fair Economic Deal. <b>The Deal should provide average Americans economic security against the class warfare of the rich, just as they need physical security against teromgrorists and criminals.</b> Tax cuts for average Americans should be complemented by increased federal support to students seeking postsecondary education and by demand-side investments in public infrastructure, national security, the reconstrucomgtion of the inner city, and new high tech sectors, including alternative energy. As a result, millions of public and private sector jobs will be created. A federal revenue sharing program must stop the financial hemorrhaging of state and local governomgment. The public sector must finance sound Social Security and Medicare systems, while a new National Medical Defense system should ensure that everyone has health insurance. To stabilize America's international financial position, we need to rethink our present commitment to the free-trade system.
What Do the People Say? In recent polls, 88 percent of Americans believed the budget deficit is a "serious" or "very serious" problem. Some 58 percent thought tax cuts should be targeted to middle-income and low-income people, and 40 percent more thought taxes should be distributed equally for all income brackets. <b>That means 98 percent of the people disagreed with tax cuts going mostly to the wealthy. Some 67 percent of the American people in an ABC News- Washington Post poll preferred to have more spending on needs like education and health care, rather than on tax cuts for the rich. Three times as many Americans say they want to be in a labor union than are in a union. Some 64 percent said it is the federal government's reomgsponsibility to make sure all Americans have health insurance. More than half said the government should create a plan to cover everyone, even if it requires a tax inomgcrease on them.</b> Polls also have shown public opinion support for financially sound Social Security and Medicare systems and rejection of privatization........
....Economic Security: Protection from the Ruling Classes. But demand-side strategies are only part of alternative economic policies. <b>Just as average citizens need physical security to protect them from terrorists and criminals, so they need economic secuomgrity to protect them from the class warfare launched in America by the rich.</b>
As Jeff Faux observes, <b>it has become a cliche in America that workers must adomgjust to being churned through many companies, none of which will provide a seomgcure working life.</b> As a result, most workers are in constant anxiety about their ecoomgnomic condition, as companies under pressure from brutally competitive markets abandon responsibility for health care, pensions, and job security.
In addition to unemployment, the American economy contains a great deal of underemployment among wage earners and middle-class citizens. Many wage-earning and middle-class families need two people working to make ends meet. Toomgday, there are almost five million Americans who are working part-time but who need full-time employment. Many are working in low-skilled, dead-end jobs. Many family providers have zero health coverage. The poor always have been worried about decent child care, affordable housing, and enough money to send their kids to college. But today most wage-earning and middle-class families have similar worries.
A Fair Economic Deal. To address the need for economic security, a Fair Ecoomgnomic Deal should be launched that serves a broad middle-class, working-class, and lower-class constituency. The constituency should recapture some of the national mood that existed after World War II, when Americans sought to build a more inomgclusive, equitable society, one in which everyone had a fair chance of making it.
What story or message might update that post—World War II American feeling and build the new economic alliance for the twenty-first century? Here are some words around which to rally, building on the suggestions of Jeff Faux:
You, the average citizen, are not alone in your search for a safe niche in this I-win-you-lose world. The very rich have profited at the expense of the families of salaried and working people of America. It is not fair for the rich to get richer at the expense of the rest of us. <b>Power has shifted so significantly toward those at the top of the income and wealth pyramid that the majority of Americans who are struggling must mobilize to force the rich and the elites back to the bargaining table.</b> We must close the income, wage, and job gaps.
Americans deserve a higher quality of life. We must invest in the human capital of all of our citizens, so all can deal successfully with technological change and the global economy. The role of the federal government must be to make investments that serve the interests of the salaried and working classes, along with the poor.
The need for a Fair Economic Deal and complementary alternative policies must be better communicated to the American people in practical, commonsense ways. We need more efforts to "personalize" the impact on the daily lives of ordiomgnary Americans of the type of policy choices discussed in this chapter and to bring to life the federal disinvestment that our citizens face if the nation does not change course.
Public Infrastructure Creation and Economic Klondikes. Historically, the public secomgtor has been pivotal for ensuring that economic growth benefits all, services are proomgvided to all who need them, and new jobs are created. Public-sector job stimulation is a countercyclical policy. But the public sector also is the generator of medium- and long-term seed capital that forges the direction the economy takes and creates milomglions of jobs in the process.
Public infrastructure investment has shaped America's future. Early on, public inomgvestment built canals and subsidized the railroads to settle the West. Government fiomgnanced the first assembly lines. President Eisenhower began building the interstate highway system in the 1950s. Federal investments developed the jet engine, began the exploration of space, and helped develop silicon chips, the computer, and the Internet.
Each of these public sector investment programs created jobs and businesses in the short term. In the long run, they spun off technological advances that became what economist Robert Heilbroner calls economic "Klondikes"—massive veins of private investment opportunities that have been the building blocks of American prosperity.
Other nations have invested hundreds of billions in public-sector infrastructure over recent years, such as the high-speed rail systems in France and parallel investomgments in Germany and Japan. Yet American public-sector infrastructure investment has declined precipitously under supply-side ideology, beginning in the 1980s under President Reagan. <b>Today, the United States is the only major industrial society not expanding its public infrastructure.</b>
On September 11 and thereafter, America has paid the price—through, for exomgample, a woeful airport security system unprepared for biological, chemical, and nuomgclear attacks. Here is a starting point for public investments that both create meanomgingful jobs for unemployed or underemployed Americans and address an urgent national need. A related public-sector, job-creating investment is development of a high-speed train system for the United States. A recent USA Today poll found that 47 percent of plane travelers thought flying the most stressful form of transport, but only 2 percent of train passengers found that travel was stressful. Yet our public rail system has been allowed to atrophy by our leaders......
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"We the people" are waking up to a "class war" that the richest have never ceased to wage. Polls show that working class Americans want their government to pursue a social agenda that is much closer to the one existing today in non-British Europe and in Canada. |