American Individualism: That Dangerous Delusion

I begin this post with two discussions. First a discussion between a group of mothers who don't vaccinate their children and a Public Health official (watch it from 45 seconds to 3:56) :



The assumption that these mother's make is that whether or not they choose to vaccinate their children is their decision alone. The possible health risks to unvaccinated, at risk groups are irrelevant - in their minds - to that decision. They either refuse to believe that there are such risks, or refuse to believe that they have a responsibility to take these risks into account. Thinking in terms of the individual apart from the community, these mothers insist that their responsibility is to themselves and their children alone; others are, presumably, responsible solely for themselves in the same manner.

The Public health official protests that when we affect the community, we cannot help but affect ourselves. If we introduce illness into our society, our own risk of illness increases as well. If we don't help take care of each other, we cannot even take care of ourselves.

The second discussion I heard today on NPR. The Supreme court is currently discussing the Constitutionality of "Obamacare." Specifically, the court is hearing arguments to rule on whether the individual mandate - which requires Americans to buy insurance or pay a fee - is permissible according to the Constitution. Whatever the fate of that particular position, some of the arguments against it put forward by the conservative Justices have a particular flavor. Listen to the following:

NPR: Health Care Mandate before Supreme Court

And this:

NPR: For and Against the Health Care Mandate

Just as the mothers did in the first clip, the Justices appeal to the individual first and foremost. The claim is that we cannot require this or that individual to "bear the costs" of other individuals, and that to do so eliminates (or at least greatly diminishes) their freedom of choice.

The opposition to these Justices argues in much the same vein as the Public Health Official in the Vaccine discussion did. Health care decisions never affect me solely as an individual, what happens to me directly affects what happens to others. If I don't get health insurance, and I am rushed to the ER for a heart attack, the hospital must treat me. When I can't pay, they must raise prices, insurance responds by raising premiums, and State Governments by raising taxes. To think of health insurance as nothing but an individual choice without any communal impact is not only naive, but entirely fails to consider the facts.

Behind the reaction of both the Justices and the mothers is the myth of the self-made individual. The myth holds, in spite of common sense, that whatever happens to me in life is the result primarily (perhaps even solely) of my own effort and achievement. If I get sick, that's my fault. If I'm not rich, I did not work hard enough. If I lose my home, can't afford chemotherapy, or find myself buried in debt, then I have no one to blame but me. Even worse, this myth seems clearly to advocate the position that the responsibility I have to others is negative; that is, I must not steal from them, murder them, or physically assault them, but I owe them nothing more than that.

The myth of the self-made individual is sheer nonsense.

We all owe a great debt to others for who we are and what we have achieved. We were taught to walk, talk, and even use the toilet by parents (or some caretaker). We were taught to read, write, and do arithmetic by teachers. Our character, personality, loves, likes, hates, preferences, values, and even our talents, are shaped to large degree by coaches, employers, coworkers, teammates, friends, lovers, and even casual acquaintanceships.

We are who we are because we are related to and interconnected with other people, other members of our communities.

But it's more than that. We are not little islands roving about an vast expanse of sea. What we do affects our society, and that society affects us. If we support policies that cut funding to education, cut aid to those living in poverty, dump people into prison for non-violent crimes, and fail to acknowledge the divisions of race and class that rip our society asunder, then we will be hurt by living in a less content, more violent, and less cooperative society. What we do or fail to do for our society, we do or fail to do for ourselves.

In economics the myth of the self-made individual is all too well known. Many of the super rich and their supporters argue that they must not be taxed at higher rates than the rest of us. They claim that to do so is nothing short of stealing what they rightly own.

Behind this idea is the assumption that wealthy people are solely responsible for their wealth. The help and assistance that they have received from others is marginal and negligible. They see themselves as "self-made" heroes whose hard work and intelligence has earned them their success.

The fact that many of these so-called "self-made" individuals were born wealthy, received government loans, grants, and other funding, use public roads, rely on employees who are publicly educated, depend on consumer protection laws, police, fire fighters, and other public services is not taken into account.

Furthermore, that how much money one earns depends on arbitrary factors - like being born with certain natural talents rather than others, being born in a time period in which one's talents pay off, and having one's talents, somewhat randomly favored by society - is never recognized by these self-professed heroes and their allies.

That a professional athlete, or a hedge fund manager, is paid so much more than an elementary school teacher, or a nurse, is simply a matter of the way society structures its economy; not a result of how hard these individuals work, or the result of some moral worth or inherent greatness that they posses.

We have to start thinking of ourselves as related to others, not merely encountering them like passing ships in the night. We are a community, not a collection of atomistic egos. What we do or fail to do for the broader society, we do or fail to do for ourselves.

Morals, Taxes, and the Welfare State

There are two primary types of arguments offered to support the Right-Wing agenda of deregulation, cuts to social welfare programs, and tax cuts for the wealthy. The first type of argument is consequentialist. Advocates of this approach claim that cutting taxes on the wealthy, deregulating markets, and slashing social welfare programs are better for everyone. These moves will, they argue, make us all wealthier.

This is line of argument is absolutely false. The empirical data is unequivocal: the Right-Wing economic agenda benefits the very wealthy only. Wealth never trickles down, deregulation never helps main street, cuts to social welfare programs never help the unemployed and working poor. These policies have been implemented since the late 1970s, and all that has happened is that poverty has increased, middle class and working people have seen no rise in income, but have lost their pensions, their health insurance, and become buried in debt. Fewer and fewer people can own a home, send their kids to college, or pay their medical bills.

The consequentialist arguments are demonstrably, empirically, and indubitably wrong.

The second kind of argument is a moral one. The following video clip of Fox News' Stuart Varney provides a good example:

According to Varney and those who think like him, it is immoral to take more from the rich. They are entitled to what they have earned, and they are better off than the rest of us because they "worked harder" and "made themselves."

There are several problems with this type of argument:

1) The wealthy have not, as a class, worked harder than anyone else. That's just plain false. Working class people often work themselves to exhaustion and even death, and wealthy people sometimes can go years without breaking a sweat. No economic class, as a group, is divided from others on the basis of how hard they have worked.

2) There are no self-made individuals. In point of fact, there is a great deal of empirical evidence that persuasively demonstrates that, in nearly every case, the very wealthy have become so with the help of (a) being born and raised with wealth and privilege and (b) the assistance of government services and subsidies - usually more so than the rest of us. Or, as Elizabeth Warren nicely sums up in the following video:

Finally, 3), as John Rawls persuasively argues, to claim that one morally deserves X one must demonstrate that one has earned X chiefly through one's own moral or individual efforts. But this is simply not possible in the case of wealth. How much personal wealth one accrues depends on a number of arbitrary factors. First, and most importantly, wealth is often a mere accident of birth, some of us are born more or less fortunate than others. Second, often our income level is determined by our natural talents. But, although we can develop these, we cannot create them. If I do not have a talent that can earn me a great deal of money, then I will not earn a great deal of money. Third, which talents pay best is based on the arbitrary preferences of society. In our society talk show hosts and professional athletes make millions, whereas school teachers make, on average, 43,000 a year. Does a talk show host, say Oprah Winfrey, deserve to be extremely wealthy in some moral sense that a teacher does not? Hardly. The difference between her wealth and theirs depends on the arbitrary whim of society. It is, therefore, not reasonable to claim that the wealthy are morally wronged if they are taxed at higher rates than those who earn less.

The moral arguments for the Right-Wing agenda fail, just as the consequentialist arguments did.

Now turning from the Right-Wing agenda to the Progressive one, can a good case be made for the Progressive agenda of high taxes on the wealthy, strong social safety nets, and powerful government spending on the public good? Yes they can.

On consequentialist grounds the Progressive agenda is clearly a good idea. Imagine the reduction in crime if far fewer Americans lived in poverty, were well-educated, had good jobs, nice retirement plans, and access to affordable quality health care! Imagine how much better the United States would compete in the world if our schools were properly funded - not to mention the moral satisfaction in being sure that our society provides for those who are suffering, who are down and out.

Furthermore, the most prosperous time in our nation's history was the period after WWII into the mid to late 70s. During that time our income inequality was at it's lowest, unions were at their strongest, regulations at their most intense, and taxes on the wealthiest 1% of income earners was never below 70%. Coincidence? If so, then explain the fact that this boom did not exist before these policies, and failed to exist afterward. Explain the occurrence of the same trends in Europe.

More importantly, however, is the moral case for a strong welfare state. As a society we need food stamps and unemployment insurance for those who are poor, health care for all, good public schools, good public roads, parks, libraries, and community centers. We need all of these because our society is a healthier, happier, safer, and much better place when we have them in all their strength. Even those who are wealthy enough to get by with their private schools, gated communities, and personal Islands, are safer and more secure in a society where those around them benefit from good social services and programs.

Consider an analogy: Vaccines prevent deadly diseases. Not everyone, however, can be vaccinated for every disease. The elderly, the very young, some people with chronic illness or disabilities, cannot take certain vaccines. In a population where the vast majority of people are vaccinated, this is not a problem. Those who cannot be vaccinated are protected by what is known as herd immunity. Because so many people are vaccinated, the feared disease cannot enter the population and the unvaccinated persons are safe. Having myself or my child vaccinated, in other words, is not merely of benefit to me and my child, but is a public good, from which we all benefit. A community without measles or polio is much better off than a community with these dangers.

Unfortunately an increasing number of parents refuse to vaccinate their children. These parents fear that vaccines are dangerous and may even cause autism. Science has conclusively refuted these fears. Many parents, however, refuse to believe the scientific community and don't vaccinate any way. The result is that diseases like whooping cough and measles have returned. The unvaccinated have suffered because of this, often even dying as a result.

The Right-Wing agenda for economics is as irrational and as dangerous as parents who won't vaccinate their children. Because an increasing number of Americans have come to believe over the last 35 years or so - in spite of the empirical facts! - that the wealthy both morally deserve all their wealth and will benefit the rest of us by keeping it (and getting more), we have seen our social welfare programs slashed, our public services eviscerated, our social contract torn to shreds.

The result is a less educated, less secure, less healthy, more impoverished, and increasingly divided society. This is a recipe for total disaster that can, in the end, finish only with widespread rebellion, despair, and disaster.

We must now either wake up to the failure of the Right-Wing economic agenda, or watch things get much worse.

Bloodletting, Snake Oil, and Tax Cuts

A word about the long abandoned but even longer widely used medical treatment of Bloodletting.

According to the PBS documentary Red Gold

Phlebotomy, or bloodletting, is the longest-running tradition in medicine. It originated in the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Greece, persisted through the Medieval, Renaissance, and Enlightenment periods, flourished in Arabic and Indian medicine, and lasted through the second Industrial Revolution. The practice continued for 2,500 years until it was replaced by the techniques of modern medicine. Doctors bled patients for every ailment imaginable. They bled for pneumonia and fevers, back pain and rheumatism, headaches and melancholia; even to treat bone fractures and other wounds. Yet there never was any evidence that phlebotomy did any good.

You get the idea, a medical practice that no one had any reason to believe worked was frequently employed anyway. In fact, as everyone now knows, bleeding a sick person harms them.

It seems clear now that Republican elected officials, party leaders, and pundits are modern day Bloodletters. Even worse, given the financial meltdown of 2008, they are rather like some professional Bloodletter plying his trade after the discovery of vaccines and antibiotics!

Republican elected officials and pundits continue to argue that the economy can be fixed and jobs created only if we cut taxes further and deregulate markets and banks more. If we do so, they claim, the wealth will trickle down making us all well-off, employed, and living the good life.

This is nothing new. The "prosperity gospel" has been the official doctrine of the right wing since the mid 1970s. What I find perplexing about this dogma, however, is that such policies have been enacted - with barely a pause or a counter policy - for 35 years. Tax cuts have never created jobs (even in the Reagan era jobs were only created by Tax raises) and never boosted the economy.

The wealth has not trickled down. In fact, as all data shows only the super rich (the 1%) have benefited from these policies. The rest of us have lost our homes and our retirements, seen our health care costs soar, our policies cover less, our personal debt explode, and our incomes stagnate or even decrease. Don't believe me? Just look at the following chart:

If you still have doubts, read the information on income inequality gathered here and here. The data is absolutely clear and perfectly comprehensible: The rich gain, everyone else loses. The most dramatic deregulation and tax cuts in our history (the Bush Tax cuts, and the repeal - under Clinton - of Glass-Steagall) far from fixing, preventing, or even alleviating this trend have caused the greatest economic and job crisis since the great depression.

And, no surprise here, the last time the super wealthy had taxes this low was the roaring 20s. Take a look at one more chart and see it for yourself:

Low tax rates combined with minimal regulation right before the great depression. The exact same combination leading up to 2oo8. Mere correlation? Both in the 20s and the decades leading up to 2008? Not likely.

Ok. I can hear some right leaning readers refusing to believe me. So one last bit of evidence. Watch the Following episode of Fault Lines (Aljazerra News) on the top 1%:

And some people think - or at least claim to think - that more of these same policies will fix things!!!???

Either these folks are modern day Bloodletters or modern day snake-oil salesmen. Take your pick.

King John Economics

According to many versions of the Robin Hood legend, King John was in the habit of taking all of the peasants' Meager resources for his own ends. The very epitome of injustice, the vile king legalized robbery and forced the peasants into misery. He did all of this simply to make himself even wealthier than he already was.

The contemporary United States is clearly following the King John Model of Economics. We have created a system that enables a very small few to become obscenely wealthy as the direct result of policies that harm a great many of the rest of us.

Before addressing that injustice,however, we all must agree on indisputable facts. First among those facts is the massive inequality in our present American economic system.

To see just how unequal our system is consider the following chart from Bill Moyers web page:

The obvious thing to notice is that most American's incomes have not changed much over the last 30 years. The top 1%, however, has seen a massive explosion in their wealth. This is not, furthermore, a bit of good luck or hard work. The top 1% has profited directly from changes in public policy. Their taxes have been cut, slashed, dropped, and cut again ... they now pay but a fraction in taxes compared to what they did in the 1970s. Furthermore, the top 1%, consisting of largely financial industry fat cats, has made a bundle on deregulation of the banking industry. Many more examples could be cited, but you get the point: public policies have, almost without exception been geared to favor the extremely wealthy. The system has been rigged to make the richest among us even richer.

The primary defense of such a system is that allowing the top 1% so much wealth is better for all of us. It is claimed that all that wealth will eventually trickle down and find it's way into all our pockets. If the wealthy have more money, they will create more jobs, and invest in building communities. (another possible defense is to claim that it is unfair to tax the wealthy any more than we do. I have addressed this objection in another blog post, read it here)

But we have had these tax slashing, deregulating policies for over thirty years now. The wealth has NEVER trickled down. As the above chart shows, only the wealthy have seen their wealth explode greatly, the rest of us are not particularly better off regarding our income. Nor have policies created jobs. On the contrary, The American manufacturing industry has been all but destroyed, as jobs were outsourced overseas. Communities have not been rebuilt or restored, but eviscerated. We once had small family restaurants and little local book stores. Now we have only Walmart, Starbucks, and McDonalds. Small main street cities have become ghost towns, or perhaps just Walmart storage facilities.

And the cost for the 99% of us who have not benefited from the tax breaks and deregulation is that far fewer of us have health insurance, or if we do have it, it costs far more and covers much less. Not very many of us have pensions or reliable savings accounts. We are buried in debt, losing our homes, and seeing the retirement age pushed up as the amount of social security we will one day receive falls down.

There is only one truly reasonable conclusion we can reach. The massive profits of the 1% are the direct result of the huge losses for the 99%. By scamming us in the housing markets, stealing our money in the banks, denying us needed health care, wiping out our retirement, and burying us in debt, the richest have prospered almost beyond imagination.

These same wealthiest 1% drove the economy into the dust and, rather than be punished for all of the jobs they cost us, the homes they lost us, and the debt they piled on us, our government took our tax dollars and handed them over to the financial elite so they could pay bonuses and take spa days. Of course that's hardly surprising, given that our elected officials run campaigns financed by the 1%, and are thus beholden to their wealthy masters.

History tells us that the nobility of King John's age forced him to sign Magna Carta; to share much of his power and resources with them. The would not longer suffer personal injustice for the benefit of the King alone.

We are called today to force those who run our system to something far more far reaching than Magna Carta. Any system that benefits the few at the expense of the many is an unjust and immoral system. Because our system, more than most in the contemporary democratic world, greatly benefits a very few to the detriment of nearly everyone else, it is deeply unjust.

In itself, this realization does not tell us what economic system is most just; importantly, however, we know that we are obligated to change the system we have.

Premier of the New Bill Moyers Show

Moyers & Company Show 101 SD from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Why we must Raise Taxes on the Wealthy

The great lie fed to us is that tax cuts are necessary during this recession. Some argue that if we raise taxes, then job losses will multiply and things will get worse. But we've had big tax cuts for a long time now. The Bush Tax cuts are nearly a decade old and they have failed to create jobs and improve the economy. In fact, these tax cuts have added to the deficit by costing the treasury hundreds of billions of dollars. By what logic then, should we extend these tax cuts? If they have failed to do anything positive in a decade, why do we think that they will now magically fix things?

Trickle-down economics has been forced down our throats for decades now. But tax cuts for the wealthy never trickle down. Giving rich people big tax breaks does not, in the long run, help the rest of us. Such cuts increase the deficit, do not create jobs, and simply widen the gulf between rich and poor, fermenting social unrest and populist rage.

Simply listen to Warren Buffett in this video



Buffett knows what he is saying. He's been a key insider in the world of finance for a very long time now. This should, however, be obvious in all of us. The most prosperous time period for the middle class, for poor and working people, even for the nation as a whole, was when taxes on the wealthiest were at their highest.

Honest.

Just look at the tax rates tax rates from previous decades, during the prosperity of the 1950s and 60s. Income tax rate on the wealthiest Americans during that period were never lower then 70% and often much higher. They still lived privileged lives and the nation as a whole has never been more financially healthy.

Since we began to undo all this, slashing tax rates for wealthy people (most of whom make their money by underpaying middle class employees, ripping people off by advertising and selling overpriced products, slashing benefits, and taking handouts from tax payers) we have had recession after recession and the plight of working people has become steadily worse.

No one in their right mind can honestly suggest continuing the Bush era tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans.

No doubt some will rant and rave about "punishing the successful," or "socialism," or it being "unfair to take someone's hard earned money, to that logic I respond with a previous blog post of mine, part of which I quote here:

In order for society to function we need public services and only a progressive income tax can provide the government with the money to properly create and maintain such services. Let us put ideology aside here and just look at these facts.

The most common objection to the progressive income tax is that it is unfair to take a rich man's "hard-earned money" and give it to somebody else. There are numerous problems with this objection.

First, that someone makes 300,000 dollars a year and someone else makes 45,000 seldom has anything to do with how hard they work. The hardest workers in our country are blue-collar working people, who sometimes work 60-70 hours a week and will never see a pay check over 40,000. So the hard work argument is absurdly false. Indeed, wages don't even depend very much on education. I will have my Ph. D. in May and will never make more than 60 or 70 thousand. There are people with Bachelors' degrees who make twice or three times that much. And this is not always - not even all that often - because of the importance of my and their respective occupations' importance for society

Second, the person making 300,000 a year did not create that money all by themselves. People who defend this "don't raise taxes on the wealthy" line of argument often talk as if such wealthy people accomplished this entirely through their own power. This is absurd. Take a person making six figures. Someone built the roads he drives on, the car he drives in, and the clothes he is wearing. Someone built his home, set up the plumbing and wiring in it, his cable, and so on. Someone slaughtered his food, processed it, packaged it, and sold it to him in the grocery store. Even more telling, he had teachers who gave him the tools for success.

None of us are self-made men, none of us operate in a void. We are not atomistic souls pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We are all part of a network of relationships, we are interdependent, interconnected, and interlinked with those who are in our community. Unless you live in the woods, built your own house from trees you chopped down, hunt and cook all your own food, and wear only the fur from your kills - you are radically dependent on other people. Without the hard work of millions of others, we could not survive and certainly could not flourish or earn high salaries. We owe a great deal to a large number of hard working people - many of whom live on meagre incomes and are often in need of public services and government aid.

If you earn six figures most of these people earn far less than you. The teachers who taught you the basic skills needed to function in society made a scant salary; many who provide you your food and clothing made far less than that. Is it really too much to ask that Uncle Sam take a few percent more of your income and then redistribute it so these people who teach our kids, build our roads, feed and clothe us might have health care? Or food stamps? Can you honestly look these hard working people in the face and say that the government cannot provide needed social service because it is wrong to raise taxes on the wealthy by 1 or 2 percent?!

Finally, the whole logic of this argument misses the point. It is NOT the case the a progressive income tax takes money from party x to give it to party y. The government takes income from party x in order to provide necessary social services available to everybody - including party x should he fall upon harder times. So we are not taxed to support "other people." Rather, we are taxed according to our means so that all people - and that includes us and our loved ones should we need it - may have access to necessary public services and government aid.

I remain convinced by these arguments. To be honest, I cannot see how anyone looking at the issue of income tax rationally and with an open-mind could honestly conclude any differently.

If we fail to end the Bush era tax cuts on the wealthy, we will be adding to our deficit, failing to do anything to create jobs, widening the gap between rich and poor even further, and harming ourselves and our futures.

It is immoral to extend these tax cuts.


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Tea-baggers, Tina Fey, and Taxes

Turn on your local news and you will see them, Tea-baggers screeching about high taxes and "evil" government spending. They are, of course, very stupid and very crazy. But we do not do well to merely mock them.

Don't get me wrong, they deserve mockery and we should be glad to give them what they deserve. But they are not merely silly, they are scary. The Tea-baggers are VERY dangerous.

They seethe with the same kind of hate and irrationality that has constantly marked the wild masses who support rising dictators. We should be very worried about these tea-baggers.

They have now expanded their "movement" into the armed forces and militia groups, they are large, influential and growing increasingly violent. To observe how absurd their irrationality has become one need only note that they are belligerently protesting taxes today, when overall current taxes are the lowest they have been in decades!

Just observe them on any television channel or on youtube.



They are a very real danger to this society. As is their leader.

Tina Fey has brilliantly portrayed Sarah Palin as a clueless idiot. Undoubtedly Palin is rather stupid or at least highly uniformed and incompetent. But the former Governor of Alaska is far more dangerous than Fey's ditsy version of her.

Sarah Palin is a highly corrupt, dishonest, and manipulative person. Hungry for power and fame she will stoke the anger of even (perhaps especially) the most extreme and violent members of the tea-bagger party. This should alarm us all.

Sarah Palin and her tea-baggers are dangerous, not just funny.

Beware.

Domestic Terrorism strikes again

We all know that the far right is unstable. Their world view is one of hatred, bigotry, and unthinking blind rage. It will thus hardly be news to learn that one of their number has struck again. Alright, so Joe Stack was not really a right wing idealogue. His politics, if we are to use that term, were really anger at all the ruling classes, State and Corporate. But like the tea-baggers he is "mad as hell, and not gonna take anymore." Big government bothered Joe Stack, but so did big business.

NPR explains

The pilot, identified as Joseph Andrew Stack, 53, was presumed dead. Emergency crews found a body in the building Thursday night, but Police Chief Art Acevedo declined to say whether it was the pilot.

Authorities said Stack was a software engineer who apparently had some tax problems. His northwest Austin home was set on fire before the crash.

Stack also owned a single-engine Piper Cherokee.

Stack's neighbors described him as a mystery man, NPR's John Burnett tells Robert Siegel.

"He didn't mix with his neighbors very much at all," Burnett said. "Most of what they learned about him was this morning at 9 o'clock when the fire went up, and his wife and their daughter, who they estimate to be about 12 years old, were distraught and screaming and went into a neighbor's house."

Investigators were looking closely at a posting on a Web site registered to a Joe Stack of San Marcos, Texas, that contained a lengthy, self-described "rant" attacking the federal tax system as unfair.

This is, in a way, logical on Stack's part. Much like other domestic terrorists He is merely putting the rhetoric of Glen Bleck and the tea-baggers into action. But he is equally voicing the sheer desperation and even despair of working class Americans. Of course, before anyone writes to tell me so, I concede that Beck and most on the right are not actually advocating violence, and would probably say they oppose such things. I do not doubt their word. But the Rhetoric is unhinged and insane and it is hardly surprising to see someone with similiar rage act this way - nor is this the first time: Such angry right-wing violence is fairly common place. One need only think of the murder of Dr. Tiller or the bombings of abortion clinics.

That right wing rhetoric lends itself to this kind of madness is clear enough. The following clip From Bill Moyers' Journal demonstrates the relationship quite clearly:

The rage, anger, hate, and ignorance speaks for itself. But that is only the tip of the iceberg. People like this Stack are easy pray for hate mongers because they really do live in a country which operates against their interests. We really are victims to a system that is designed to exploit us. Americans are rightly angry, confused, and ready to take action.

Just look at what else NPR tells us about Mr. Stack's blog post:

The post portrays an America that is divided between corrupt individuals who are powerful enough to make tax laws and governmental functions work in their favor and people who have become victims of the system.

This claim is absolutely right. It is not as Stack and the loony tea-baggers imagine. The issue is not "big government" or "socialism" or "liberals" or any such nonsense. Nor is the issue simply about the federal tax system, free markets, or big banks. Five minutes of open and honest refection refutes that rubbish. The issue is much bigger than that.

The problem is that money runs the country. Powerful corporations buy our politicians and make them pass laws for them; not us. The moneyed interests own both parties and expect a payoff no matter who wins any election cycle. In fact much of Stack's anger is entirely comprehensible as can be seen here

It is indeed true that the government does exist to help out the rich and powerful at the expense of "Joe common." Americans are rightly fired up and filled with rage about this. Until this issue is honestly faced and real changes are made we will find more Joe Stacks.

Joe Stack voiced an anger, a rage, that is very present today. People from all walks of life feel betrayed and harmed by those who hold money and power. They are correct.

The Tea-bagger crowd is using this rage and this injustice to whip up hate. They are blaming "liberals" and "big-government." Let us not laugh them off. True, they are ignorant and uniformed. But they known enough to see that they are mistreated. If the Glen Becks of the world can find them a scape goat or two, they will attack it. Remember the past, fascism easily arises among the downtrodden.

Why we should raise taxes on the wealthy

Since the House proposed raising taxes (1-3%) on the wealthiest 1.5% or so of incomes, there has been the usual rhetoric about "punishing the successful" and about how "unfair" it is to take away "their money that they worked so hard for."

In response to such knee-jerk rhetoric I think a brief justificatin of the progressive income tax should be given.

We pay taxes to enjoy the benefits and services of society. We are protected by police and the military, enjoy the services of the fire department, post office, and public roads. We attend public schools and congregate in public parks. We walk our dogs on public sidewalks. All of this and much more is payed for by our tax dollars.

Some argue - rather absurdly - that all this could be paid for by sales tax alone. This claim is false. Sales tax would have to be raised too high for many to afford, would unfairly discriminate against those who had less money by greatly reducing their spending power, and simply cause many to buy less. Very quickly we would have more poverty and a weaker economy. Income tax is essential to create, maintain, and improve public services and programs; which are, let us not forget, essential to society.

Very well, some might argue,then why not just have a flat tax? All pay the same percentage of their income. Again the answer is very simple, a flat tax would have to be low enough to make sure that the very poor do not fall below levels at which they could not afford to live. It follows that a flat tax would be very low indeed, and that once again we could not afford the upkeep of our public roads, defense forces, police, etc. ..

This is really very simple logic; not rocket science. In order for society to function we need public services and only a progressive income tax can provide the government with the money to properly create and maintain such services. Let us put ideology aside here and just look at these facts.

The most common objection to the progressive income tax is that it is unfair to take a rich man's "hard-earned money" and give it to somebody else. There are numerous problems with this objection.

First, that someone makes 300,000 dollars a year and someone else makes 45,000 seldom has anything to do with how hard they work. The hardest workers in our country are blue-collar working people, who sometimes work 60-70 hours a week and will never see a pay check over 40,000. So the hard work argument is absurdly false. Indeed, wages don't even depend very much on education. I will have my Ph. D. in May and will never make more than 60 or 70 thousand. There are people with Bachelors' degrees who make twice or three times that much. And this is not always - not even all that often - because of the importance of my and their respective occupations' importance for society

Second, the person making 300,000 a year did not create that money all by themselves. People who defend this "don't raise taxes on the wealthy" line of argument often talk as if such wealthy people accomplished this entirely through their own power. This is absurd. Take a person making six figures. Someone built the roads he drives on, the car he drives in, and the clothes he is wearing. Someone built his home, set up the plumbing and wiring in it, his cable, and so on. Someone slaughtered his food, processed it, packaged it, and sold it to him in the grocery store. Even more telling, he had teachers who gave him the tools for success.

None of us are self-made men, none of us operate in a void. We are not atomistic souls pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We are all part of a network of relationships, we are interdependent, interconnected, and interlinked with those who are in our community. Unless you live in the woods, built your own house from trees you chopped down, hunt and cook all your own food, and wear only the fur from your kills - you are radically dependent on other people. Without the hard work of millions of others, we could not survive and certainly could not flourish or earn high salaries. We owe a great deal to a large number of hard working people - many of whom live on meagre incomes and are often in need of public services and government aid.

If you earn six figures most of these people earn far less than you. The teachers who taught you the basic skills needed to function in society made a scant salary; many who provide you your food and clothing made far less than that. Is it really too much to ask that Uncle Sam take a few percent more of your income and then redistribute it so these people who teach our kids, build our roads, feed and clothe us might have health care? Or food stamps? Can you honestly look these hard working people in the face and say that the government cannot provide needed social service because it is wrong to raise taxes on the wealthy by 1 or 2 percent?!

Finally, the whole logic of this argument misses the point. It is NOT the case the a progressive income tax takes money from party x to give it to party y. The government takes income from party x in order to provide necessary social services available to everybody - including party x should he fall upon harder times. So we are not taxed to support "other people." Rather, we are taxed according to our means so that all people - and that includes us and our loved ones should we need it - may have access to necessary public services and government aid.

There remains, of course, those who think raising taxes on the wealthy will kill small business and hurt job growth. This is complete falsehood as well. Check out Robert Reich's blog as well as this thoughtful piece from New Republic for the truth on that front.

It is time we dropped the "punishing the successful" line and actually looked at the issue rationally and objectively.

Olbermann schools teabaggers about taxes

Amen Keith! AMEN!!!!!!!!!