Friday 24 October 2008
by: Steve Weissman, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
"Trickle-down" failure. (Illustration: Tom Lechner)
For those who voice doubts about Barack Obama and some of his less progressive policy advisers, please take heart from the way he has defended his plan to cut taxes for the vast majority while raising them for families making over $250,000. Who should pay what for the costs of government raises the most basic issues of fairness. But who pays also determines whether we rebuild our economy from the bottom up, as Obama promises, or continue to wait in vain for good jobs and decent wages to trickle down from John McCain's friends at the top.
Even more heartening, Obama has braved the blows he knew would come and found a way to make a sensible tax policy a winning issue for Democrats, at least according to the latest polls. Who would've thunk it? Largely under the tireless tutelage of George Lakoff, the party of the dorsally challenged is finally learning how to keep the radical right from framing the terms of our national debate.
Also see:
Steve Weissman, "How Much Change Does Robert Rubin Believe In" •
Steve Weissman, "America's Right-Wing Zealots Will Not Fade Away" •
Taxing higher incomes at higher rates and imposing heavy inheritance taxes on large estates have long brought howls of outrage from the zealots who shepherded the conservative movement from before "the Reagan Revolution" to the suicidal anointing of Sarah Palin. Whether from moral conviction or simple self-interest, they have viewed progressive taxation and what they call "death taxes" as little better than armed robbery - or worse.
Just ask Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, as Terry Gross did back in 2003 on National Public Radio's Fresh Air. "The morality" of these taxes "says it's O.K. to do something to a group because they're a small percentage of the population," Norquist argued. And this "is the morality that says that the Holocaust is O.K. because they didn't target everybody, just a small percentage."
Progressive taxation as Holocaust - a stunning equation from the right-wing's most outspoken tax-buster and the reputed architect of George W. Bush's tax cuts for the rich.
Less original but no less strident, McCain and Palin have simply tried to tar Obama with tired old smears, calling him "a tax and spend liberal" and even "a Socialist" who would soak the rich and spread their wealth. After all, didn't Karl Marx support progressive taxation?
Yes, Marx did, as the John Birchers of my youth never missed the chance to point out. But Adam Smith, the prophet of the free market, similarly supported progressive taxation, as did McCain's Republican hero, Teddy Roosevelt, and - some would argue - a fellow called Jesus the Carpenter, who is famously quoted as saying, "To whom much has been given, much will be required."
In fact, until the modern conservative movement and its anti-tax crusaders, almost everyone who thought about progressive taxation favored it, and for a wide variety of reasons.
In terms of fairness, bigger money-makers generally make far greater use of the services government provides, from our subsidized financial system to our vast complex of commercial, property and patent laws to our federally-funded education, communications and transportation networks, once the envy of the world. Those with more property similarly benefit more from the protection of the legal system, while our oil companies and their investors gain far more from our military forces than do the rest of us. Why shouldn't those who benefit the most pay more for all they get?
In terms of policy, the arguments are equally strong. Our social stability depends upon rebuilding a strong middle class and reducing the enormous gap between the rich and all the rest of us. Whether from above or below, this growing inequality threatens the survival of even our limited democracy and does nothing to increase the strength of America's economy.
Why, then, should our tax code allow corporations to deduct as a legitimate cost of doing business the over-blown salaries and benefits they pay their executives and directors?
Why should we continue to weaken estate taxes, which encourages the growth of family dynasties?
And why should we hold back from explicitly using tax policy to create the kind of society a majority wants. That's what McCain and Palin would do if they win - only, what they want is an America that favors the rich on the unfulfilled promise that the rich will somehow provide for the poor.
In the end, a more progressive tax system is an important step in the direction of a more humane society. It can help create a more democratic society, a goal that many right-wingers explicitly reject. And it can help create a more vigorous economy, one based on growing demand from the bottom to encourage investment from the top. Cutting taxes for the vast majority builds that demand, spreading wealth in a way that will create greater wealth for us all.
These are hardly radical ideas, especially during a lengthy recession when the economy badly needs an on-going stimulus. McCain and Palin clearly disagree. But instead of countering with rational arguments, they call Obama names. Red-baiting über allies. Why am I not surprised?
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France.
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