Sorry, it's been a while. Work, work, work. But I have been arguing with a friend of mine (both of us are members of Labor for Single-Payer, but he's more active in it), and here's my latest spew:
First let me say I do think the ACA is "woefully inadequate." Single payer is what we need, or nationalized health care, but some business
interests (and not others, interestingly enough) and their lapdog
politicians have blocked anything close to that (along with much that is
not even close). And since we failed to get either of those things, it
would have been nice for elected representatives (especially Democrats)
to at least include what was called "the public option" at the time. I
don't think any of those things would have necessarily solved the
problem this poor guy [see below] is bringing up, but I'll get back to that. I still have to say the ACA helped millions of people get coverage, and that is nothing to sneeze at.
Showing posts with label taxes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label taxes. Show all posts
Monday, December 22, 2014
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Satan sandwiches over a barrel
So, let me get this straight -- Obama gives away half the store, and still loses the AAA rating?
IMF protesters used to get at least honorable mention in the small presses on the problem with "Third World debt". No matter what we learned in high school about democracy of the marketplace, and so on, Haitian slaves and others who overthrew their European overlords found themselves unable to buy goods they needed, not for lack of money, but because most traders simply wouldn't sell to them, or demanded punitive prices ... and because former colonial governments insisted that the newly freed peoples should pay the debts of (you guessed it) the former colonial governments, international loan sharks made up phony debts or jacked up interest rates specially for the liberees. You might call it a conspiracy, or just co-piracy, but either way these folks suddenly didn't care so much about supply and demand, and sellers and buyers in an open marketplace: they just wanted to stick it to the little guy.
Sound familiar? It should. The US economy is being held hostage, and the coolest thing about negotiating with hostage-takers is, paying them often fuels the fire. We talk about investors, bankers, capital gains recipients -- it amounts to one thing: the rich. For 40 years the rich have been demanding, and getting, deeper and deeper tax cuts. That has not been enough. Union busting has run rampant. Private sector unions have dropped to less than 10 percent of the workforce, which means they have little effect any more on anyone's wages outside their own membership. Bad. For everybody, union or no. Cuts to social services (what the government does for the poor and working people) soon followed. The rich and their own politicians thinly justify the cuts based on reduced revenues and increased debt (which of course is a result a result of the tax cuts, etc.), and then these reductions impact working people's ability to spend an pay taxes, and so on, and so on, and so on.
They have us over a barrel. I would argue it's not necessary or permanent, but there it is. They crash, we bail them out. We crash, they say sorry but we'll have to raise our interest rates because you cats aren't buying enough of our (friends') garbage. So we have a phony debt crisis. And we bargain. Obama seems to have no desire to fight, at least not for us. And we lose big, with no tax increases, etc., from the other side. Whew, crisis averted, right? Wrong. They are just getting started with this little shakedown. And if we have any sense at all, we will have just begun to fight it.
IMF protesters used to get at least honorable mention in the small presses on the problem with "Third World debt". No matter what we learned in high school about democracy of the marketplace, and so on, Haitian slaves and others who overthrew their European overlords found themselves unable to buy goods they needed, not for lack of money, but because most traders simply wouldn't sell to them, or demanded punitive prices ... and because former colonial governments insisted that the newly freed peoples should pay the debts of (you guessed it) the former colonial governments, international loan sharks made up phony debts or jacked up interest rates specially for the liberees. You might call it a conspiracy, or just co-piracy, but either way these folks suddenly didn't care so much about supply and demand, and sellers and buyers in an open marketplace: they just wanted to stick it to the little guy.
Sound familiar? It should. The US economy is being held hostage, and the coolest thing about negotiating with hostage-takers is, paying them often fuels the fire. We talk about investors, bankers, capital gains recipients -- it amounts to one thing: the rich. For 40 years the rich have been demanding, and getting, deeper and deeper tax cuts. That has not been enough. Union busting has run rampant. Private sector unions have dropped to less than 10 percent of the workforce, which means they have little effect any more on anyone's wages outside their own membership. Bad. For everybody, union or no. Cuts to social services (what the government does for the poor and working people) soon followed. The rich and their own politicians thinly justify the cuts based on reduced revenues and increased debt (which of course is a result a result of the tax cuts, etc.), and then these reductions impact working people's ability to spend an pay taxes, and so on, and so on, and so on.
They have us over a barrel. I would argue it's not necessary or permanent, but there it is. They crash, we bail them out. We crash, they say sorry but we'll have to raise our interest rates because you cats aren't buying enough of our (friends') garbage. So we have a phony debt crisis. And we bargain. Obama seems to have no desire to fight, at least not for us. And we lose big, with no tax increases, etc., from the other side. Whew, crisis averted, right? Wrong. They are just getting started with this little shakedown. And if we have any sense at all, we will have just begun to fight it.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Jobs AND Justice
Hitting the nail on the head as usual, Jobs with Justice and allies are demanding -- whaaat? -- jobs?? publicly funded? in the middle of a recession? a "Great Recession"?!?
But aren't we all lucky hold on to what we have without some Big Brother World Government Belgian Queen Elizabeth-Osama bin Laden Jr. Great Satan stepping in and taking away all our tea and freedoms, especially our filthy rich brothers and sisters, who are sitting on a mountain of cash and won't give us a job at the moment, but if we just give them a few more tax breaks they might?
In other words, you my innocent friend may ask, don't taxes take money out of the economy?
The only rational response when you hear this (all over the fracking place) is: WRONG!
(Actually it should be "Wrong, YOU DIPSTICK!") In fact what is taking money out of the economy is giving it to the rich! They aren't investing it. They're hoarding it! (See above.)
OK, carefully, now, carefully: Taxes on the rich, especially on money they are stashing away or blowing on the markets, and using that money to create jobs for working class folks who will certainly spend it, probably locally, is ... what? Taking money out of the economy? Or putting it back in? Hmmm... tough one, eh?
But aren't we all lucky hold on to what we have without some Big Brother World Government Belgian Queen Elizabeth-Osama bin Laden Jr. Great Satan stepping in and taking away all our tea and freedoms, especially our filthy rich brothers and sisters, who are sitting on a mountain of cash and won't give us a job at the moment, but if we just give them a few more tax breaks they might?
In other words, you my innocent friend may ask, don't taxes take money out of the economy?
The only rational response when you hear this (all over the fracking place) is: WRONG!
(Actually it should be "Wrong, YOU DIPSTICK!") In fact what is taking money out of the economy is giving it to the rich! They aren't investing it. They're hoarding it! (See above.)
OK, carefully, now, carefully: Taxes on the rich, especially on money they are stashing away or blowing on the markets, and using that money to create jobs for working class folks who will certainly spend it, probably locally, is ... what? Taking money out of the economy? Or putting it back in? Hmmm... tough one, eh?
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
More Uses for Poverty
"The number of people in the US who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama's watch, with ranks of working poor approaching 1960's levels that led to the national war on poverty," says an AP story on recent census figures. And considering all the low-income paranoids I know (and maybe you know) who dodge the census while their coworkers land stopgap gigs walking for the Census Bureau, not to mention how hard it always is to count the very people who need counting the most, we can safely assume that like most dire government statistics, these are optimistic.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Ending the Great Recession
Robert Reich is usually on the right track, and he is again: wage or wealth inequality is clearly the festering sore at ground zero of the current Great Recession. And taking costs off the other end of the see-saw, through earned income tax credit or health insurance reform or free education, clearly help workers. (... when the health reform is fixed.) Splitting the difference when workers are forced to shift down a pay grade would help, too.
Not sure why Reich omits the speculation tax (see also this), but on another point maybe he's joining the trigger happy crowd ready to declare the Employee Free Choice Act* dead and that's too bad. Long term, as Reich knows, there will be no economic recovery without strengthening workers' rights -- and the most important right is the right to organize, which we no longer fully have. The Employee Free Choice Act is going to have to come back, and keep coming back.
Of course that's true of worker control, and sindicalism, social revolution, and so on, but there are also specific short-term reforms that need to stay in the sunshine. Of course we always have to remember to say out loud that single-payer healthcare is a necessary but not sufficient condition for social & economic justice, and so on.
The bottom line is, the rich have to be relieved of some of the spoils they've managed to accrue by hook and by crook over generations. Wealth taxes. Speculation taxes. Progressive income taxes. Industrial nationalization. We can debate and argue over which is best -- and we should -- but without one or more of these taking a big bite out of the mountain of loot the rich are sitting on, the working class will never solve any of our deep-seated economic problems.
They've been robbing us of land, wages, taxes, and on and on, and it's time they made some restitution.
But we have to remember that that's not the end. The "Peace Dividend" if nothing else proved that freeing up the money does not guarantee that we get it, by any stretch of the imagination. Part of the package has to always be spending the money on our priorities: health, education, welfare, rights at work. Their priorities get plenty of play.
[*This article gives Emanuel and the White House too much credit. In fact, just after Obama became "President-Elect" Emanuel was already signaling deep doubts in answer reporters' questions about the incoming Administration's presumed support for EFCA - despite what other aides said later. In fact, Emanuel laughed off EFCA questions, implying that the question was loaded, as if support were already thin ice. My reading of the tea leaves is this Administration never intended to help EFCA in any way, shape or form. Shame on them.]
Not sure why Reich omits the speculation tax (see also this), but on another point maybe he's joining the trigger happy crowd ready to declare the Employee Free Choice Act* dead and that's too bad. Long term, as Reich knows, there will be no economic recovery without strengthening workers' rights -- and the most important right is the right to organize, which we no longer fully have. The Employee Free Choice Act is going to have to come back, and keep coming back.
Of course that's true of worker control, and sindicalism, social revolution, and so on, but there are also specific short-term reforms that need to stay in the sunshine. Of course we always have to remember to say out loud that single-payer healthcare is a necessary but not sufficient condition for social & economic justice, and so on.
The bottom line is, the rich have to be relieved of some of the spoils they've managed to accrue by hook and by crook over generations. Wealth taxes. Speculation taxes. Progressive income taxes. Industrial nationalization. We can debate and argue over which is best -- and we should -- but without one or more of these taking a big bite out of the mountain of loot the rich are sitting on, the working class will never solve any of our deep-seated economic problems.
They've been robbing us of land, wages, taxes, and on and on, and it's time they made some restitution.
But we have to remember that that's not the end. The "Peace Dividend" if nothing else proved that freeing up the money does not guarantee that we get it, by any stretch of the imagination. Part of the package has to always be spending the money on our priorities: health, education, welfare, rights at work. Their priorities get plenty of play.
[*This article gives Emanuel and the White House too much credit. In fact, just after Obama became "President-Elect" Emanuel was already signaling deep doubts in answer reporters' questions about the incoming Administration's presumed support for EFCA - despite what other aides said later. In fact, Emanuel laughed off EFCA questions, implying that the question was loaded, as if support were already thin ice. My reading of the tea leaves is this Administration never intended to help EFCA in any way, shape or form. Shame on them.]
Monday, April 13, 2009
Missing the Boat
Seems the Libertarian nutjobs are coming out of the woodwork, holding little "tea parties" here and there. But these so-called tea parties have just about one and a half things in common with the original in Boston, besides the name, that is.
First, they are disguised. In 1773 the famous tea party-istas were disguised as Native Americans. In 2009 the cheap knock-offs are disguised as patriots who are standing up for the common people.
In 1773 of course the issue was "taxation without representation". The British colonies in North America had no elected representation in the British Parliament, though some of them did have influence via money. The American Revolution was a mixed bag, led by wealthy landowners - most involved in slavery - and by common craftsmen and idealists who believed in Thomas Paine's quite radical "Rights of Man."
These 21st century tea-party-goers have the principle just about reversed. They reject the basic principle established in the English wars of parliament versus king, carried on in the American rebellion, that the power to tax derives directly from the democratic process, and - I'd argue - that its primary purpose is to "promote the general welfare."
So, taxes would be the second thing this year's tea parties have in common with the 1773 party, except that it's similar in name only. That's why I say one and a half things in commmon.
There is certainly plenty of wastage of tax money, always has been. Business-obsessed and war-mongering public officials put our tax money to the worst possible uses: aggressive wars, subsidies to the biggest and most destructive corporations, tax breaks to the rich, deregulating industry, privatizing public services (yes, these activities cost tax money).
On the other hand, taxes pay for schools, libraries, streets, sanitation (in many places), public health, fire departments, adult education programs, and other things that clearly "promote the general welfare". Social security, disability, and child and family welfare programs are excellent uses of tax money. We could use twice as many teachers, and a lot more expenditure in most of these neglected areas. Better levees and a half-way decent evacuation plan might have saved half a million poor people's homes in 2005. Clearly a comprehensive response after the fact was missing, sidelined to the more pressing objectives of the richest 1 percent of our population.
So clearly taxes are not the problem, per se. The problem is a two-parter: how we spend taxes, and how we collect tax. Taxes are not too high, in fact; they are too low - on the rich. Sure, they're too high on most of us - sales taxes, property taxes, gas taxes, all regressive (they hit you harder, the lower your income). This is not a wonkish detail; it's the very heart of the issue. Libertarians (emphasis on the capital 'L') who gloss over this crucial reality are either clueless or faking, at the deepest level.
A lot of coded racism plays into this nowadays, too: anti-welfare "queen" ideology a la Ronnie "Rayguns" Reagan, etc. On a very important institutional level this is a familiar "divide and conquer" politics of the sort that allowed the English to conquer the Native Americans, India, and so on, and still keeps the American people under the thumb of its wealthy. It distracts our righteous popular anger over the repeated bail-outs of the rich and deepening neglect of most of us - away from the authentic popular pressure that is striving heroically in the opposite direction: toward a "people's bailout" and what some are calling equity.
First, they are disguised. In 1773 the famous tea party-istas were disguised as Native Americans. In 2009 the cheap knock-offs are disguised as patriots who are standing up for the common people.
In 1773 of course the issue was "taxation without representation". The British colonies in North America had no elected representation in the British Parliament, though some of them did have influence via money. The American Revolution was a mixed bag, led by wealthy landowners - most involved in slavery - and by common craftsmen and idealists who believed in Thomas Paine's quite radical "Rights of Man."
These 21st century tea-party-goers have the principle just about reversed. They reject the basic principle established in the English wars of parliament versus king, carried on in the American rebellion, that the power to tax derives directly from the democratic process, and - I'd argue - that its primary purpose is to "promote the general welfare."
So, taxes would be the second thing this year's tea parties have in common with the 1773 party, except that it's similar in name only. That's why I say one and a half things in commmon.
There is certainly plenty of wastage of tax money, always has been. Business-obsessed and war-mongering public officials put our tax money to the worst possible uses: aggressive wars, subsidies to the biggest and most destructive corporations, tax breaks to the rich, deregulating industry, privatizing public services (yes, these activities cost tax money).
On the other hand, taxes pay for schools, libraries, streets, sanitation (in many places), public health, fire departments, adult education programs, and other things that clearly "promote the general welfare". Social security, disability, and child and family welfare programs are excellent uses of tax money. We could use twice as many teachers, and a lot more expenditure in most of these neglected areas. Better levees and a half-way decent evacuation plan might have saved half a million poor people's homes in 2005. Clearly a comprehensive response after the fact was missing, sidelined to the more pressing objectives of the richest 1 percent of our population.
So clearly taxes are not the problem, per se. The problem is a two-parter: how we spend taxes, and how we collect tax. Taxes are not too high, in fact; they are too low - on the rich. Sure, they're too high on most of us - sales taxes, property taxes, gas taxes, all regressive (they hit you harder, the lower your income). This is not a wonkish detail; it's the very heart of the issue. Libertarians (emphasis on the capital 'L') who gloss over this crucial reality are either clueless or faking, at the deepest level.
A lot of coded racism plays into this nowadays, too: anti-welfare "queen" ideology a la Ronnie "Rayguns" Reagan, etc. On a very important institutional level this is a familiar "divide and conquer" politics of the sort that allowed the English to conquer the Native Americans, India, and so on, and still keeps the American people under the thumb of its wealthy. It distracts our righteous popular anger over the repeated bail-outs of the rich and deepening neglect of most of us - away from the authentic popular pressure that is striving heroically in the opposite direction: toward a "people's bailout" and what some are calling equity.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Say it ain't so, Barack!
Obama's gang is telling us today (anonymously - how slick) that the new Prez might delay tax cuts to the rich ... because (incredibly) of the economic "downturn" (AP, 11-23-08).
WRONG! The "downturn" - economists sometimes call it a "correction" (or a "major correction") - is the best reason that's come along in a long time to increase taxes on the rich. In the immortal words of the esteemed Senator from Vermont: "Let the rich bail out the rich!"
Sanders's 10% on incomes over a million ($500,00 for individuals) won't be enough, but he's on the right track.
It is true, I have to admit, that income tax is not the best way to do it, not even a progressive income tax, which we barely still have. (The Bushies lowered the top bracket from 39% to 35% - a long drop from the 77% I recall from my pre-Reagan youth, as if in a dream.) A wealth tax would be better, according to the really smart people. In other words, we ought to tax what we don't want, not what we do. That is, we want production, not speculation, etc.
But in the short run, income tax is what we've got. Somebody has to pay, not just for the bailouts, but for all this stimulus ... and those of who are losing income, prospects, and so on, should not be the ones, nor should our children.
My point? Obama's apparently feeling a lot of pressure from the Dark Side - let's give him some from our side!
WRONG! The "downturn" - economists sometimes call it a "correction" (or a "major correction") - is the best reason that's come along in a long time to increase taxes on the rich. In the immortal words of the esteemed Senator from Vermont: "Let the rich bail out the rich!"
Sanders's 10% on incomes over a million ($500,00 for individuals) won't be enough, but he's on the right track.
It is true, I have to admit, that income tax is not the best way to do it, not even a progressive income tax, which we barely still have. (The Bushies lowered the top bracket from 39% to 35% - a long drop from the 77% I recall from my pre-Reagan youth, as if in a dream.) A wealth tax would be better, according to the really smart people. In other words, we ought to tax what we don't want, not what we do. That is, we want production, not speculation, etc.
But in the short run, income tax is what we've got. Somebody has to pay, not just for the bailouts, but for all this stimulus ... and those of who are losing income, prospects, and so on, should not be the ones, nor should our children.
My point? Obama's apparently feeling a lot of pressure from the Dark Side - let's give him some from our side!
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