Romney’s agenda: Class warfare

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http://www.suntimes.com/news/jackson/14611395-452/romneys-agenda-class-warfare.html

BY JESSE JACKSON [e-mail] August 20, 2012 7:16PM

Raise taxes on the rich? “Class war­fare” the Republicans rail. Any dis­cussion of inequality, says Mitt Romney, should be held privately “in quiet rooms.”

Yet the Romney agenda for the country opens a new offensive in class warfare — only on the side of the few, not the many. America’s inequality has already reached extremes not seen since 1929 before the Great Depression. In 2010, the richest 1 percent captured an obscene 93 percent of the nation’s income growth. The top 1 percent now has as much wealth as 90 percent of Americans. snip

He promises to pay for these tax cuts by closing “loopholes,” but refuses to identify them. But even with the most generous assumptions, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center — a joint venture of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution — found that the rich don’t collect enough in loopholes to pay for the proposed tax cuts. Romney’s tax plan would end with the richest Americans getting a tax cut while most Americans end up paying more. snip

Romney also wants to repeal even the modest reforms of Wall Street that Obama got through Congress. He opposes raising the minimum wage and echoes Republican scorn of worker rights and unions. But the decline of unions has contributed to an economy in which workers no longer gain a fair share of the increased productivity and profits that they help to create. Once more, class warfare on the side of the CEOs and against working families.