Forum Post: Robert Reich: Stop the Austerity Train Wreck!
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 19, 2011, 3:43 p.m. EST by looselyhuman
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I nominate this as the economic platform of the 99%:
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.
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/8482-stop-the-austerity-train-wreck
Also Bernie Sanders:
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/8483-democrats-stop-caving-in
Dr Reich is right on target regarding the need for higher rates for the super rich.
And the current inequity gets worse the higher up you go.
The top 400 income earners(making more than $110 million a year) pay about 18% of their income in federal income tax.
The group just below them($10-110 million) pay about 21%, and the group below them($0.4-10 million) pay 24%.
When you add in regressive federal payroll taxes, and state and local real estate and sales taxes, the top 400 are paying about the same overall tax rate as the bottom 20%.
Exactly. You'll get plenty of feedback on that 18% rate because of the manufactured exemption of capital gains from the definition of income, but you're 100% correct.
And that top 400, by the way, has more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined.