The biggest question right now on Planet Washington is whether the congressional supercommittee will reach an agreement.
That's the wrong question. Agreement or not, Washington is on the road to making budget cuts that will slow the economy, increase unemployment, and impose additional hardship on millions of Americans.
The real question is how to stop this austerity train wreck, and substitute the following:
First: No cuts before jobs are back -- until unemployment is down to 5 percent. Until then, the economy needs a boost, not a cut. Consumers -- whose spending is 70 percent of the economy -- don't have the money to boost the economy on their own. Their pay is dropping and they're losing jobs.
Second: Make the boost big enough. 14 million Americans are out of work, and 10 million are working part time who need full-time jobs. The president's proposed jobs program is a start but it's tiny relative to what needs to be done. It would create fewer than 2 million jobs. We need a big jobs program -- rebuilding America's crumbling infrastructure, and including a WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps.
Third: To pay for this, raise taxes on the super-rich. It's only fair. Never before has so much income and wealth been concentrated at the very top, and taxes on the top so low. Go back to the 70 percent marginal tax we had before 1980. And include more tax brackets at the top. It doesn't make sense that any income over $375,000 is taxed at the same 35 percent, even if it's a billion dollars. And tax all sources of income at the same rate, including capital gains.
Fourth: Cut the budget where the real bloat is. Military spending and corporate welfare. End weapons systems that don't work and stop wars we shouldn't be fighting to begin with, and we save over $300 billion a year. Cut corporate welfare -- subsidies and special tax breaks going to big agribusiness, big oil, big pharma, and big insurance -- and we save another $100 billion.
Do you hear me, Washington? Do these four things and restore jobs and prosperity. Fail to do these, and you'll make things much, much worse.
Follow Robert Reich on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RBReich
Everyone's probably got a friend or friend-of-friend somewhere who is drawing social security but not really a disabled body.... That's where reform is possible on the entitlement side of the federal expenditures.
I could never understand why Republicans get so fired up about the welfare cheat while they ignore the corporate cheats who are really robbing us blind.
Taxing the super rich will only inspire them to find another way around paying taxes. FDR instituted a millionaires tax in the 30's and the number of millionaires went down by 70%. The rich didn't get rich by being stupid and they don't see their role on this planet to provide income for those not working.
Greece, Spain and Italy have all raised taxes to over 40%. They're still broke, their revenue is down, their GDP's are down, and Mr Reich wants to do the same thing here. Thanks but no thanks.
Unemployment. The current coverage lasts for nearly 2 years. How long does it take to find a job? Our government is paying people not to work and are surprised when people don't work.
Finally, his infrastructure idea. Governement in all forms collects 60 cents on every gallon of gas sold. Why isn't that money going to roads and not into the general fund? Taxes like these are necessary and useful but not if they're being misused by some politicians to buy votes. Remember New Orleans. For 25 years the federal and state government gave that city billions to shore up it's levy system. That money didn't go to levies and catastrophe happened.
The wealth are escaping taxes by using the lower capital gains rate. Republicans are pushing for the rate to go to 0%. Republicans also push for 0% tax on dividends calling it double taxation. That is what needs to change. To be fair income regardless of the route should be taxed the same.
Greece, Spain and Italy are not the US. In Greece it is well known that not only do they NOT pay their taxes but they do not get prosecuted for not paying taxes. Spain just does not have the same work ethic as the US. The Italians are WAY more active in their democracy then in the US.
Infrastructure is more that just road it include rail, waterway, ports, water, power, bandwidth, waste disposal and labor.
"Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA) Introduces Bill to Reverse NLRB's "Micro-Union" Decision
Late last week, Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA) introduced the Representation Fairness Restoration Act (S. 1843) -- legislation designed to reverse the National Labor Relations Board's August 26, 2011 decision in the Specialty Healthcare case. In that decision, the Board overruled 20 years of practice regarding how it determines the "appropriate unit" in non-acute health care facilities. More importantly, however, the NLRB has clearly signaled that it now endorses Member Becker’s long held belief that smaller units -- such as units that consist of only one department, or perhaps even one job classification -- should be permitted, rather than the current NLRB preference of favoring “wall to wall” units. Sen. Isakson's legislation would reinstate the long-standing standard for determining which employees make up an appropriate bargaining unit for the purposes of the NLRA."
"Shortly after graduating from the University of Georgia, he opened the first Cobb County office of Northside Realty, a prominent Atlanta-area real estate firm. He became company president in 1979, a post he held for 22 years, during which Northside became the biggest independent real estate company in Georgia."
And that, my friends, is why you should vote for Democratic attorneys or anyone but a Republican business person.....they think, like Herman Cain, that being a person in business is all that is required to bamboozle the citizens for their own profit and money is their only interest.
I can remember a time when a college education was supposed to bring about some personal fulfillment instead of making you a drone of industry paying back a corrupted student loan from a college that had very little interest in hiring worthy instructors and even less in your future employment.
It is insane to not take the right road out of this morass. Jobs. rebuilding. It is almost like the republicans are selling out Americans to the devil.
http://www.healthtransformation.net/cs/contact_us
How many ways can you miss the point?
I am not a fan of deficit spending but.............
Defend ourselves? MOre like 'defend our oil". We could defend our country on 1/4 of our current military. (I am not suggesting this)
I read your post and the sword that hangs over the conversation is the black budget that goes to internal security since 911. If you want to make the argument for the changes to our defense since 911, IMHO ,you have to make an argument AGAINST our constitution, because the security apparatus constructed (with no appearent need) have given the government the tools to take all of our freedoms.
"Life will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom. But it will be an oceanic circle whose centre will be the individual always ready to perish for the village, the latter ready to perish for the circle of villages till at last the whole becomes one life composed of individuals, never aggressive in their arrogance, but ever humble, sharing the majesty of the oceanic circle of which they are integral units. Therefore, the outermost circumference will not wield power to crush the inner circle, but will give strength to all within and will derive its own strength from it."
The OWS general assemblies in cities around the world are living examples of these "ever expanding, never ascending" oceanic circles. When everyone has to be included in decision-making, consensus is the only way. This is how indigenous cultures have practiced democracy throughout history. Future generations are reconnecting to this ancient tradition of shaping real freedom because corporate rule has displaced democracy, and people's representatives have mutated into corporate representatives.
Today, worldwide, representative democracy has reached its democratic limits. From being "by the people, for the people, of the people", it has become "by the corporations, of the corporations, for the corporations". Money drives elections, and money runs government.
The question is, an we put the gennie back in the bottle?
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/20111112135744718390.html
Information technology companies are focused on cutting pay for the people who work for them. If their effort succeeds, however, it will suggest to every other industry that the time is now to gut FLSA for every covered private-sector worker.
Introduced in the U.S. Senate last month by Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), the CPU Act has found a Democratic co-sponsor in Sen. Michael Bennet (Colo.), who is joined by two Republican co-sponsors, Sens. Mike Enzi (Wy.) and Johnny Isakson (Ga.).
Or are you within the 1 percent?
Go Robert!
www.offthegridmpls.blogspot.com