I’ll probably vote for Stein, but it will be more of a protest vote than an endorsement of her beliefs.
I understand being pissed about the Wall Street bailout in ’08, but that’s not a reason to continue hemorrhaging money. At some point, doesn’t this country have to deal with its deficit? The debt and a failure to have any money to respond to future problems scares me almost as much as climate change. In both cases, we’re making quite a mess for the next generations.
Cal, I agree we should reduce the deficit and the debt. But the way to do that is not to cut spending. That kills jobs. That hurts millions of people, immediately. The way to balance the budget and start to pay off the debt is to raise taxes on the rich — and just the rich. Just the 1%. They’ve seen the overwhelming lion’s share of tax cuts since 1964 and Johnson, and the rich utilize far and away the most public resources. It’s not close.
And for those who say we could tax the 1% at 100% and there wouldn’t be enough money, consider this: Americans had total income of 14 trillion — that we know about — in 2014. The richest 1% now bring in roughly 25% of all income, though some estimates say it’s as low as 20%. If we use the latter, just the 1% alone bring in roughly 2.8 trillion a year in income. If we raised taxes back up to where they were from FDR through Kennedy, their effective rate would be roughly 55% on a 91% marginal top rate. They currently pay in the neighborhood of 25% effectively, on a top rate of 39.6%. So you’re talking an additional revenue flow of well over 700 billion a year — and this is just personal income we know about. The infamous Panama Papers have confirmed what most of us already knew: Trillions are untaxed and hidden.
IMO, Sanders goes wrong on the tax issue, because he’s not willing to only raise taxes on the rich. He does want to raise their rates, and corporate rates, but he also is talking about small increases for the working class, too. Wrong way to go, in my view. With inequality at obscenely immoral levels, it’s time to use one of the few tools we have to try to at least slightly mitigate for capitalism’s despicable, destructive, unsustainable internal dynamics. It’s the least we can do, etc.
