"Red-Hot Economy". The Republicans want to neutralize public dissatisfaction over economic justice by pretending that the economy under Bush is now "red hot" because a lot of jobs have been added and housing construction is strong. Both those signs are, alas, false indicators of prosperity for people at large.
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First, the jobs the Republicans are so proud of pay much less than the jobs lost in earlier years that they replace.
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Second, the only reason the housing sector is booming is that people expect the Federal Reserve System to raise interest rates shortly, and once those rates rise, housing costs will as well rise, in many cases beyond the ability of ordinary people to buy.
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I was caught in the last interest-rate escalation when I bought my house in June 2000. Four short years ago, I got stuck with a fixed-rate 30-year mortgage at 9% interest, because a few weeks before I bought, the monster Alan Greenspan had raised interest rates for something like the sixth time in eight months and was expected to raise them again within weeks of my mortgage commitment. I was able to refinance only last year, and my mortgage payment dropped by $261 a month! There are a lot of people for whom an additional $261 a month puts owning their own home, part of the Republicans' oft-cited "American dream", beyond reach. And it's going to happen again if things keep going the way they're going.
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Democrats can easily and permanently end all talk of a "red-hot economy" with this simple answer: "Yes, the economy is so hot you can cook burgers and fries with it!" Because that's where the growth is that Republicans are so dishonestly excited about: in low-paying jobs like burger-flipping and deep-frying.
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Tho Kerry has weakly pointed out that the jobs being created are not the equivalent of the jobs that have been lost, he is somehow exceedingly timorous when it comes to JUMPING on the huge gap in income between new jobs and lost jobs. As Eleanor Clift of Newsweek magazine observed on yesterday's McLaughlin Group, Americans have lost jobs that paid $30 an hour and are getting instead jobs that pay $6 an hour! This would be good only if each American who used to make $30 an hour could get 5 jobs! But of course, s/he can't.
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So why is Kerry so TIMID about denouncing the willful impoverishment of the middle class and poor by the rich? Could it be because he is a megamillionaire?
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He needs to draw a line in the sand between Republican millionaires and Democratic millionaires. Republican millionaires believe that wealth is their God-given right, proof of their superiority and favor from Heaven. Anyone who isn't rich doesn't deserve to be rich; anyone who is intended by Heaven to be rich will become rich, and there's nothing government should do to change this divine order.
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Democratic millionaires never cease to be grateful for their good fortune, and know the huge part that luck has played in making them rich. They who were born to wealth accept wealth as a responsibility, a weighty obligation to use their time and money for public good, to help others, as thru charitable institutions, hospital wings, and educational foundations, not hoard it for the good life for themselves and their children alone.
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To paraphrase the generally accepted assertion by the French Duc de Levis in 1808, "noblesse oblige", decent millionaires of any political party accept that "richesse oblige": wealth obligates the rich to use the money they don't need for their own needs for, instead, public needs.
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There are some Republican millionaires, mostly "old money", who understand and accept that. The Rockefellers, with their University and Foundation, come to mind. But the bulk of Republican millionaires today are greedy enemies of society who pretend that even if they were born to money, they somehow earned it!
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Kerry, given his huge family fortune, is ideally suited to calling the rich to a higher purpose: to promote the public good in the fashion of the Rockefellers, Fords, Kennedys; Bill Gates and Ted Turner.
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Money is power, and power can be used for good or ill. If it is used for ill, it should be taken away from the evil and given to the good — with no apology.
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Progressive taxation is not stealing. It is simple redistribution from those who have too much to (benefit) those who have too little — simple economic equity: fairness. How can anyone attack fairness?
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Republican millionaires pretend that "confiscatory" taxation, summed up by the populist expression "soak the rich", does more harm than good to society. Bull. It has NEVER hurt society to soak the rich, as long as the tax was levied on income, not passive wealth. Income is dynamic. It does not shrink existing fortunes; it just keeps them from growing at too high a rate.
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How rich are the rich today? Well, a billionaire, Donald Trump of New York, briefly entertained the idea of running for President in 2000, and proposed that a one-time millionaires' tax could pay off the national debt entirely and thus save us each year billions upon billions of dollars now wasted on interest payments to the rich. No one even attempted to disprove his assertion that we could actually do that: that a one-time charge on the super-rich could actually pay off the entire national debt!
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If that is true, or even nearly true, then surely dramatically increased taxation on the very rich could starkly reduce the national debt and its concomitant transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich.
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How can anyone oppose the idea of imposing a 99% tax rate on everything above $5 million in income in any given year? That would still leave a multimillionaire with $10,000 per million above $5 million at normal tax rates.
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The top pick at this year's National Basketball Association draft, straight out of high school, will "earn" $11 million his first year! No one "earns" $11 million a year, certainly not with trivia like playing a stupid game. If we had a "confiscatory" tax rate of 99% on every $1 million above $5 million per year, he would nonetheless make, after regular taxation on the first $5 million, say, $3 million, then $10,000 per million thereafter, times $6 million: another $60,000. How many kids "earn" even $60,000 per year straight out of high school? — not to mention the $3 million a year he would take home after non-"confiscatory" taxation on the first $5 million of his salary?
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The typical person in this country who acquires only a high-school education can expect to make, today, on the order of $20,000 to $30,000 a year — if s/he's lucky. This NBA draftee would CLEAR $60,000 a year just on the portion of his (obscene) income above $5 MILLION that is taxed at a "confiscatory" rate, and thus clear approximately $3,060,000 a year! Would it be "unjust" of society to "steal" 'so much' of 'his' money and leave him with 'just' $3,060,000 a year? I don't think so. And I think you would be hard-pressed to find anyone on this entire planet who would find such tax rates unjust.
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At the same time as this sports clown who plans to spend the next few years of his life playing a children's game is making this obscene amount of money, essentially all the kids he went to school with will struggle to make a living on less than 1/1000th his income. In what other area of life is anyone 1,000 times superior to the average person? Is anyone 1,000 times as good-looking, athletic, smart, or healthy as another? Does anyone live 1,000 times the average lifespan? No. There is no area of nature in which the disparity between one person and the general run of people is 1,000 times — or more. So why should we have an artificial and unnatural order when it comes to income? We shouldn't.
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"Economic fairness" is the Democrats' best issue in 2004 and for the foreseeable future. Kerry will CRUSH Bush if he lands on the gross inequality that the present tax system and the rapacious behavior of Republican megamillionaires in the corporate suite are getting away with, downsizing away the life savings of working people for the benefit of rich shareholders and overcompensated executives; offshoring the best jobs our technology can produce; replacing people with machines; cutting pay and benefits; taking away what had been regarded as fundamental rights of working people before the Republicans' Plutocratic Revolution of 1986: pensions and healthcare paid for by the employer.
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Kerry must wage a war for economic fairness. Take out a battle-ax and swing it around to chop off the head of the Plutocratic Revolution!
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The obscenely rich do not "earn" the disgraceful amounts of money they have, and it's not their money. Our name is on it: every dollar they have has the words "United States of America" on it, and if that name weren't on it, it wouldn't be worth the paper it's printed on.
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It's OUR money and OUR economy. We created the infrastructure; we created the social stability and schools and roadways and telephone system and computer system and everything else that makes it possible for the rich to be rich. We have no reason to hesitate in demanding that the rich pay their dues for living extremely well in a society that affords them such astounding opportunity.
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The Republican Right claims to be religious, pious Christians, and pretends (whether they say this aloud or not) that their wealth is ordained by God. Let them heed these words from Luke 12:48: "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more."
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:25 PM