Thursday, April 28, 2011

Class Warfare

by Keith Cooper

From Broader View Weekly, April 28, 2011

A couple of weeks ago, my brother Gordon sent me an email that asked a specific question. The headline read “How high should we tax the rich?” In the message he implied that I saw all wealthy as “evil” and sought to punish them for their prosperity. That is an unfair characterization of me and of the large plurality of Americans who poll in favor of requiring the wealthy to pay their fair share.

Gordon’s premise was that no matter how high we set the tax rate for the rich, the increased revenue would fall short of addressing the deficit and national debt. His claim was that it would only meet 10 percent of the federal deficit. Well, his math is a bit skewed because it uses IRS “earnings” figures, which fail to allow for all the sources of wealth the wealthy enjoy. It also wasn’t the first time that I had come across this particular mathematical argument. It has been making the talk radio rounds for the past few weeks as conservatives are attacking President Obama and calling speeches defending his budgetary strategy a “Soak the Rich” tour. Rush Limbaugh laid out the scenario that even if you “confiscated” 100% of the wealthy’s income (a one-time deal, in his mind, because then it’s gone), it would fall short of resolving the deficit of the current year. Well, nobody is proposing a 100% tax rate for the wealthy, but all of this detracts from the real forces at play here.

At the core of our nation’s economic problems (at least for the 99 percent of Americans profoundly impacted by the recession), is a class war that has been going on for decades, nearly unchecked by those in power (regardless of their political party affiliation). There is a systemic agenda to distribute wealth from the bottom to the top, which is intended to maintain and grow an enormous gap between the wealthiest among us and the poor. Through legislative policy, tax codes and funding for services like education and job creation the middle class has been shrunk to near extinction and the poor have been devastated.

Corporate influence in Washington (and even at the state and local levels) has gotten so out of control that every politician from the freshman congressman, to the senior senator, to the President of the United States is beholden to corporate interests. During the debate, which resulted in the current crippled health care plan, conservatives adamantly opposed the proposal out of selfish motivation (“I’m not paying for your coverage”). However, an enemy just as big was the fact that health care represents a third of the U.S. economy. Private insurance companies, pharmaceuticals and other health industry powers exerted enormous influence over the process and the imperfect product that emerged. Of course, conservatives and Tea Partiers are intent on repealing the law and stripping from it any benefits that still exist.

I am not interested in punishing the wealthy with taxation. I don’t even demonize CEOs and executives who receive obscene bonuses and salaries at a time when the rest of us are struggling to put food on our tables and gas in our cars. But I absolutely don’t subscribe to the theory that tax cuts at the top stimulate the economy in a way that benefits everyone. The trickle-down lie upon which Reaganomics was based is still doing its damages to our economy (except to the economic growth of the top earners who have had positive growth even in the midst of deep recession). If we could somehow tie tax breaks as an incentive to create jobs, I would lend my support. But no one from either major party is “seriously” pursuing this.

What I believe is ridiculous is the conservative claim that the deficit is chief among the nation’s problems. If Paul Ryan and the Republicans in Congress were really serious about addressing deficit spending, why are they still fighting for the tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent? And why is Congressman Ryan seeking even greater tax giveaways to the wealthy while asking the middle class and the poor to make sacrifices? The answer is clearer than it appears. Corporate corruption of the democratic process in the United States feeds itself.

Budgets are increasingly being used to feed the rich and starve the poor. Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare (among other dastardly provisions of his “Path to Prosperity” – for the prosperous) will benefit private insurance on the backs of seniors and others who will end up paying out-of-pocket money they can’t afford for substandard coverage. State budgets across the country are being used to wage war on public workers and other working class individuals, while refusing to even ask corporations to share sacrifice.

Voucher programs like the Ryan Medicare proposal have been used for years to dress cuts in programs in seemingly innocuous terms. Vouchers for education have been used to drain money from public school systems and funnel it into the private sector. As education is increasingly under fire, vouchers, charter schools and funding cuts will be commonly used as tools to bankrupt public education and further disadvantage the poor. All of this is part of the systemic shift currently building the abysmal U.S. wealth gap.

There is no attack on the nation’s rich, but there is undeniably an attack on the working poor. One only need listen to conservative punditry to get a sense of the disdain the conservative movement holds for the poor. Limbaugh, last week, expressed his extreme dismay that 47% of Americans pay no taxes. The premise of that show’s bloviation was that the nanny state had created half a nation of lazy citizens, happy to rest on their laurels and have the wealthy pay their way. The sneering tone was nauseating, but not nearly as sickening as his disregard for the corporate bias and systemic corruption that has created the ranks of poor who don’t earn enough to pay taxes.

I am not interested in punishing the “evil” rich, but I will stand proudly in defense of the middle class and poor against an unfair vilification and despicable attack.

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