Tax the Rich Movement Grows in the United States

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/node/10648

By Doug Cunningham

President Obama seems steadfast about turning to those who have disproportionately profited in recent years to have them pay more taxes so they pay their fair share to finance public services. And around the country that sentiment is growing in these very hard economic times. In New York City last week tens of thousands of workers and community activists showed up at a city hall protest calling for higher taxes on those who make more than $250,000 a year in order to avoid layoffs and cuts in public services. Heather Berry is a New York City teacher with the United Federation of Teachers. Thousands of teachers were threatened with layoffs due to state and city budget deficits.

: “About two months ago we were very, very worried. And then once the federal stimulus money went through people started to feel more comfortable. But I don’t think we can be relaxed yet, because we haven’t got that money.”

Bill Henning is Vice-President of Communications Workers of America Local 1180. Without more revenue, he says thousands of public workers could lose their jobs.

: “They’re not as massive at this point as the 27,000 that Mayor Bloomberg said in his doomsday budget. But there is a real concern that ultimately many more people will lose their job.”

[FreakinDJ]

1. about time

[HowHasItComeToThis]

12. CLAWBACK IS APPROPRIATE

THEY HAVE STOLEN FROM US SINCE 1980 AND RAYGUN FRUD

[FreakinDJ]

13. I wouldn't call it "Clawback" but they do pay disproportionately less

they do pay disproportionately less percentage of their earnings.

person earning 50K pays almost 40% in taxes when it is all said and done

persons earning 500K pay about 8%

[FLDCVADem]

21. ??

I'd really be interested in seeing a citation as to the 40% v. 8%.

[David Dunham]

2. Layoffs will happen because govts will lack enough money even if they tax the rich

[originalpckelly]

3. Tax the rich? Why leave the corporations that give them their wealth...

on the backs of workers intact? Why not take away the right of a corporation to form?

[anonymous171]

4. Why not just hand out free money to everyone?

Let's take this one step at a time.

[leftstreet]

5. Sounds good to me. $10-20k each would stimulate the economy

Let's do it.

[Confusious]

6. Yea, and cause

Hyper-inflation where a loaf of bread will cost $50.

Did you take economics in high school?

[leftstreet]

8. You shouldn't be eating bread anyway

But yes, you're right, we might need to entertain the notion of some price controls or something. I mean, if we're letting the Capitalists stay in charge and all...

[Confusious]

10. I'm drowning, and your worrying about wether I'm wearing the

right clothes. Does bread make you fat? I got no problems with that. might need it.

lets give everyone money, then lets get prices controls.... and then what?

they F up the economy and you compound the problem.

What are you suggesting otherwise? Communism? Socialism? Communism doesn't work ( because we are... human ) socialism is ownership of the means of production by the workers, which has capitalism in it.

I want capitalism with lots of smart regulations, and socialism thrown in.

[originalpckelly]

14. What the hell? Where did that come from? Talk about random bullshit replies.

Could you please explain where the hell this came from?

How is ending corporate control of America anything like handing out free money to everyone?

[DearAbby]

7. Any GOPer

feels taxing the wealthy to pay their fair share, can send their tax cuts to them.

[PDJane]

9. Take away the legal fiction of corporate personhood.

[anonymous171]

11. YES! nt

[originalpckelly]

16. What do you mean by that?

Do you simply think that corporations being considered people is the problem, or do you oppose corporations altogether?

[Egalitariat]

20. Can you spell out what that means in detail?****

nm

[PDJane]

25. In some detail, yes,

But it would take a book to explain in absolute detail. To quote Jan Edwards and Molly Morgan of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, 'Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property. Corporate Personhood is the legal fiction that property is a person.'

The corporation is a legal fiction. It exists through papers, agreements, fees, taxes and provision of limited services. The legal fiction of personhood arose through much lobbying and bribery, mostly from the railway era; it says that a corporation has the rights of a person, rather than a entity apart from the rights granted to citizens of a country or state. The law makes the corporate entity, in essence, an artificial person.

What's wrong with that? Well, for starters, that grants the rights of a person to an entity that has no responsibility other than that imposed by law to protect the environment. It grants the rights of a person to an entity whose only purpose, by other law, is the bottom line; the interest of the shareholder. In other words, a corporate person has no morals, no empathy, no duties other than those that the law can manage to impose and enforce. In ways that should be quite clear, a corporation is a sociopath.

Corporate entities merged and merged, until the most ruthless were at the top of the heap and their original charters are, essentially, useless. Corporations have lobbied for rollbacks of regulations that were designed to protect humanity and the environment and the commons, and by and large, they have gotten what they wanted. They have grown so large that they are a de facto world government, privatizing the profit and nationalizing their debt, leaving chaos and poverty in their wake. The one decision that enabled that was the one that wasn't made: the myth of corporate personhood.

The whole thing arose out of an error: a court recorder mis-transcribed the statement of Chief Justice Waite in the Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company case. There was no Supreme Court decision to the effect that corporations are equal to natural and not artificial persons, and there were no opinions issued to that effect, and therefore no dissenting opinions. This notification is only in headnotes, which are not part of the decision.

There are a couple of books to read if you want further information. Probably the best is Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights, by Thom Hartmann. There is also The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, by Joel Bakan, Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy by Ted Nace and too many others to list here.

[Egalitariat]

26. What notable changes would take place if corporate personhood was eliminated?

[PDJane]

27. Ah, well, That could be interesting.

For starters, many corporations are legally allowed to avoid responsibility in ways that would never be permitted for an individual. Coporations may rik loss of income or investments, but their losses are nothing compared to the risks that we take due to their activities. It would mean an end to the regulation changes gained because companies are artificial persons; the revokation of those rules would mean that they would be bound to their charter. Because of that, they would likely find it more practical to be smaller entities. It would mean and end to that kind of shifting of risk to the taxpayer, for starters, and it would mean an equalization of the playing field for smaller businesses.

The myth of corporate personhood allowed corporations to lobby for rule changes that benefit them (but not, please note, us), and to slant the field in favour of the corporation. That is what has allowed them to get too big to fail, and to privatize all the profits of the commons.

For instance, coporate shareholders in the majority of states have no responsibility for the acts or debts of the coporations they own. That's great for the investors. They might lose the money itself, but they bear no responsibility for the death and destruction that the coroporations they invest in are responsible for. Those rules have, for the most part, been in place only since 1999 in most states. That means that those rules would be under reconsideration, and they should be.

North American companies can put chemicals into the environment long before the long-term effects of exposure to low doses are determined, and corporations are rarely called to account for the damage that becomes obvious years later. That could change, and change quickly.

Unequal taxation is a serious burden, and the Bush bunch tax breaks have only made this situation worse, from a shift in the income tax burden from the corporation to the worker, property taxes to the residents, through tax breaks and incentives for large corporations to relocate. Those incentives cost billions every year. In essence, we, the people, are carrying a horrendously unequal burden. It doesn't make for a healthy society, and as the share of the cash decreases at the bottom and increases at the top, the economic system is more liable to collapse. Yes, in essence that's what happened in 1929, and history is repeating itself. The mechanisms are somewhat different, but the situation remains the same. If you take away the right of corporations to lobby, you can reverse some of this.

That one change could reverse everything from these inequalities to the inability of countries to restrictive or punitive actions against exporting countries like China, where slave labour is common and product standards almost non-existent.

Will it happen immediately? No. But it is an excellent start to a saner world.

[steelmania75]

15. Why can't Obama just raise their taxes now?

[originalpckelly]

17. They'd business plot him...

like they tried to do to FDR:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_plot

[SammyWinstonJack]

18. Maybe because he'd raising his own taxes?

:shrug: I don't trust rich people, no matter who they are or what high position they hold or what political party they belong too. Thanks to the last 8 yrs, I am pretty jaded and cynical.

[Chemical Bill]

19. I don't expect to read about this in the Wall St. Journal. n/t

[FlyingSquirrel]

22. They'll never be taxed enough.

There will always be loopholes. Even if they were to say, "Anything over $1 million a year in earnings goes back to the government", they'd find a way around it.

[OhioChick]

23. About Damn Time. n/t

[Naturyl]

24. Tax them HARD.

It's way past time to send a clear and simple message. If you benefit from the opportunities provided by the American system, you will be expected to GIVE BACK. Not pennies or a pittance, but a substantial amount. It's only fair, and it's the decent thing to do.

Until we get serious about this social ethos, things are going to be tough.