By Robert Reich- New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks wrote yesterday that we should be focusing on the interrelated social problems of the poor rather than inequality, and they are fundamentally different. Baloney. (1) When almost all the gains from growth go to the top, the middle class doesn’t have the purchasing power necessary for buoyant growth, which means high unemployment. Slow growth and high unemployment hit the poor especially hard because they’re the first to be fired, last to be hired, and most likely to bear the brunt of declining wages and benefits. (2) When the middle class is stressed, it has a harder time being generous to those in need. The “interrelated social problems” of the poor presumably will require some money, but the cupboard is bare, and the middle class doesn’t want to, nor does it feel it can afford to, pay more in taxes. (3) America’s shrinking middle class also hobbles upward mobility. Not only is there less money for good schools, job training, and social services, but it’s harder to move upward when the income ladder is far longer, and when its middle rungs have disappeared. Finally, and most absurdly, Brooks doesn’t think we should be talking about unequal political power, because that causes divisiveness and makes it harder to reach political consensus over what to do for the poor. Hogwash. For more than thirty years, as wealth has accumulated at the top, Washington has been reducing taxes on the wealthy, expanding tax loopholes that disproportionately benefit the rich, deregulating Wall Street, and providing ever larger subsidies, bailouts, and tax breaks for large corporations. Big money has now all but engulfed Washington and many state capitals -- drowning out the voices of average Americans, filling the campaign chests of candidates who will do their bidding, financing attacks on organized labor, and bankrolling a vast empire of right-wing think-tanks and publicists that fill the airwaves with half-truths and distortions. Unequal political power is the endgame of widening inequality -- its most noxious and insidious consequence, its fundamental threat to our democracy. Brooks is the most thoughtful of all conservative pundits. That hes spouting such absurdities is worrisome. In my state, Boeing just rolled us for billions of tax dollars by holding jobs hostage. Boeing already pays little taxes - so what exactly did our politicians promise to do for them, that they wanted done - that adds up to billions more value? We voters do not even know, yet - but we will be paying for it! Tax Like Its 1955 - when the rich and big corporations paid serious tax rates - before we are utterly a third world country of very rich and very poor, with little middle class. There was a formula that worked for years, and Reagan and the right wing ruined it for us- by cutting taxes and creating loop holes for years!
Posted on: Sat, 18 Jan 2014 17:17:21 +0000
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