In the decade beginning in 2001, the year I retired because of health, corporate profits doubled and the federal tax on that income was cut in half. In that same decade, for most of the population debt went up faster than wages. Those of you reading this probably have less purchasing power now than you did at the turn of the century. Unemployment in an economy where corporations double their profit has increased staggeringly.
Yet misguided, or should I say corporate-funded, legislators want to lower expenditures on food stamps, burden seniors by raising Social Security eligibility age, dismantle a health care program that will insure millions, and refuse to extend Federal Medicaid in States.
That is but a partial list of the corporate-funded strategy.
The answer to Social Security’s future is simple: eliminate the income cap on the FICA tax and at the same time apply means-testing to limit the wealthy receiving benefits.
The answer to the debt-ceiling is also simple: raise Federal tax on corporations here or off-shore, since their profits are shared with neither the country nor their workers. No, don’t suggest that it is the corporations’ profits that create jobs, because they obvioiusly have not.
Don’t expect either of these simple solutions to be seriously considered though. We live in a nation where there is no really independent free press with any effect. Our citizenry has been propagandized for so long by our educational system and myths about who we are as a people, our being exceptional, that there is no populace to champion the populist cause.
Even though class warfare rages among us, revolution won’t come either, since the 99% of us have too much to lose as compared to the rest of the world’s underclass. But if our current path as a nation continues, desperation may well lead to revolt. Or we may continue to languish in serfdom.
We do have a choice.
Sanchismos 