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(Photo: Tax Credits/flickr)
Ever since Governor Romney’s comment about writing off the 47 percent of households who don’t pay federal income tax became public, news stories and opinion pieces have been dominated by discussions of who does and does not pay taxes. This is great news for the one percent.
The obsession with taxes means that the one percent are playing a game that they can only win. The vast majority of the upward redistribution of income over the last three decades has been in before tax income. This has been brought about through a variety of changes in laws and institutions that had the effect of restructuring markets in ways that redistribute income upward.
For example, we have a trade policy that is designed to put downward pressure on the wages of manufacturing workers by putting them in direct competition with low-wage workers in the developing world. (Highly paid professionals like doctors and lawyers are still largely protected from such competition.) This downward pressure is amplified by the over-valued dollar, a policy that had its origins in the Clinton administration.
The implicit government insurance provided to too big to fail banks transfers around $60 billion a year to the shareholders and top executives at the big banks. Patent and copyright monopolies redistribute hundreds of billions a year from consumers to drug companies and the tech and entertainment industry.
Anti-union laws weaken the power of workers trying to organize for collective action, thereby reducing their ability to secure wage increases. (Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was going to court to have union leaders thrown in jail the teachers continued their strike.) And a Federal Reserve Board that throws workers out of work to meet inflation targets protects the wealth of creditors at the cost of undermining the bargaining power of workers.
These and other areas of public policy are the key factors determining the relative well-being of the rich and the rest of us. As long as we are obsessed with a discussion of whether the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy will continue, the policies responsible for the bulk of the upward redistribution over the last three decades will never be discussed. The current debate may be good news for President Obama’s re-election prospects, but it is not a positive development for those who don’t like to see the perpetuation of government policies that redistribute money upward. (Yes, this is all a plug for my free book, The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive.)
Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economy and Policy Research. He also writes a regular blog, Beat the Press, where this post originally appeared
17 Comments
This point isn’t made often enough. I’m glad you made it here.
If liberals want to talk tax policy, they should talk about ending the ~$100 billion in corporate welfare and ask if GE paying no taxes is fair. Every time a wing nut Republican talks about welfare, the liberal should respond by saying lets cut the corporate welfare first (they are not even people). Then let’s cut the corporate welfare, AND then let’s cut the other stuff.
When the only thing the president has to talk about is whether or not the wealthy is going to pay their fare share we have all lost. Even if the Bush tax cuts expire how will this transfer to jobs? Our media is doing the country a huge disservice by not insisting that Obama tells the country what his plans for the future are.
We need to turn the tax debate into one that favors us.
Lift the cap on the SS tax and lower the overall rate. The lower overall tax would be a stimulus and higher collections – lower income individuals pay about 15% overall. If everyone paid, say 10%, SS would be healthy forever – and we could raise the payout.
Agitate for a wealth tax to end the deficit and break up the heriditary oligarchy that is stealing our democracy.
Unless we move the debate to the left, it will continue the rightward drift.
To do that we need a truly progressive Democratic president and not a DINO that we have currently.
Ending of Bush tax cuts for the wealthy is never going to happen no matter who is elected. Romney will never let those end. Duh!. But, neither will our supposedly progressive stalwart, Obama. All those millions and millions of campaign contribution dollars coming into Obama’s coffers are aimed at ensuring that the Bush tax cuts for the superwealthy never expire.
The Obama tax cuts for the rich, you mean.
Fixed it for you.
Amen, brother.
Or we need to speak out as citizens through OWS and other means and move the debate left by ourselves. The democratic party as it is currently constituted will never do it for us.
Team Obama has moved from Transitional To Transactional Politics to win in 2012 ( Thank you Bill and Hillary ). The ” quid pro quo is now all about the dough ” and not about worker rights, affordable and good healthcare, or fair trade agreements, etc. As in so many things elections are mutable with the goal being winning by +1. The cures are there for all this but Populist/Progressive ideas go to die at the RNC and DNC Headquarters ( Just ask Howard Dean ). If a rule of thumb on Wall Street is ” bad money chases out good money ” and leads to distorted markets you can times that by a factor of 10 when discussing political campaigns. As Lily Tomlin stated so eloquently, ” no matter how cynical I get I just can’t keep up ” this is what, we the people, have wrought by allowing the buying and selling of our gov’t ( At least it’s out front ). And, the only people with the dough to stop it on a national level don’t seem that interested in changing the rules. All may not be lost but we’re damn close. Just sayin.
I like that quote from Lily Tomlin.
Turn out the lights, the party’s over.
What the dipshit failed to mention is the fact that he is one of that 47% along with perhaps 10,000 of his fellow rich asshats.
Romney’s dad was on welfare when he was a kid.
Clarification. When Romney’s Dad was kid, Romney’s dad was on welfare (along with Romneys grandparents and their other children).
IOW, if we believe Romney’s own words to his fat cat donors, among the 47% of people who can never be persuaded to for Romney for President are Willard Mitt Romney, his wife, Ann Romney, his father, George Romney and George Romney’s entire immediate family, who are Willard Mitt Romney’s own father, grandparents, aunts and uncles.
Then again, why would any sane person believe anything Mitt Romney says? He switches positions and rationales 180 degrees so often, no sane person can possibly believe everything self-contradictory thing he says.
Now, once again, he asks us to ignore the information given us by our own eyes and eyes and believe his lame explanation of what he said and why.
And a man who is incompetent to run his own campaign asks us to vote for him to run a huge nation?
Riiiiight.
Uh, from what I recall living overseas is we had a strong dollar under Clinton, and Bush started a weak dollar program to make exporting easier.
The US currency fell by half or more against major world currencies. And hasn’t come back up much sinice.
Progressive ideas never see the light of day in the debate. There is no real debate. The MSM sees to this. Maintaining the self-serving status quo for the 1% is all that matters. You don’t have to be a cynic to understand this.
Thanks for these thoughts, Baker.