Manufacturing Poverty

From CounterPunch, the Green Party's recent vice presidential candidate Cheri Honkala cuts through the bullshit while opining on the fiscal cliff negotiations:

The idea that America has become so impoverished that it can no longer afford the most elementary necessities of its people is patently absurd. As a nation we are richer and more productive than ever. Despite declining industrial employment, our manufacturing OUTPUT is higher now than it has ever been, thanks to the technological revolution. The attacks on the safety net are deliberate efforts to artificially introduce poverty in the midst of plenty.

The solution to the deficit is not difficult: it is to make banks and corporations pay their taxes. In the 1940s, corporations paid 50% more taxes than individuals. Today, they pay 75% LESS than individuals. There is no shortage of money. Corporations continue to reap record profits year after year, but they are paying fewer taxes.

More here.

A few months back on facebook, I inadvertently pissed off a few conservative friends and friends of friends during a discussion on the teachers strike in Chicago.  Of course, I was supporting the teachers.  

One of these conservative commenters, a woman with whom I went to high school, strongly pressed me, "What part of 'six hundred million dollar deficit' don't you get?"  

I shot back with something to the effect of  "tax the hell out of the rich," explaining that if that's where the money is, then just go and get it--it's not like there's a magic shield around it or anything; just go tax it.  I'm not one hundred percent certain, but I think my brazen and shameless advocacy of taking money from the very wealthy is what got everybody mad at me, and got me temporarily unfriended by another woman who was hosting the discussion.

There's a point in this.  A lot of Americans have some truly sensitive attitudes about the notion of taxing the rich.  I would also add that a lot of Americans haven't come fully to terms with what, exactly, capitalism demands from our society.

The thing we've got to start understanding, as a people, is that capitalism, as a social force, is incredibly good at what it does.  It is relentless in its pursuit of profit, always innovating, always finding ways to win, in all spheres of human existence.  In this context, as far as the fairness of taxation goes, it is remarkable that we don't acknowledge the elephant in the middle of the living room: capitalism has figured out how to keep the vast, vast majority of the wealth it creates all to itself.  Of course, capitalism couldn't create any wealth at all without the regular ordinary Americans it employs as workers, and that's one of the reasons why we traditionally like to believe that when capitalism is doing well, we're all doing well--you know, rising tides lifting all the boats and whatnot.  I mean, that's what capitalism ought to do because without workers, capitalism is a total failure.  Quid pro quo, we work hard, and you take care of the economy such that it serves us all.  And maybe that's how it used to work.  But one can no longer honestly say that's how it actually works now.  Wages and benefits have stagnated, and even fallen in real dollars, since the 1970s, which, not so coincidentally, was when organized labor started to lose power and influence.  This has happened in spite of ever increasing productivity; that is, workers have been creating ever more wealth year after year, but have been receiving smaller and smaller shares of it.

In its continual drive to profit, American capitalism has become like the Taxman of the famous Beatles song: "There's one for you, nineteen for me."  Our political establishment, from  the days of FDR's New Deal up to the dawn of the Reagan era, once protected us from such horrific skimming; but the wealthy have bought out the politicians, and those days are long gone.

So here's the situation.  Capitalism has been extraordinarily successful in keeping rightfully earned dollars away from workers--it should also be observed that impoverishing vast sectors of the population doubly rewards capitalism in that poor workers create a downward pressure on wages, thus enriching capitalists all the more.  And, needless to say, poorer workers pay less in taxes.  But society still needs money to function, for schools, roads, bridges, national security, police, firemen, ambulances, and yes, health care, rent support, day care, and an overall safety net especially because this transfer of wealth away from workers and toward capital creates much more of a need for this kind of spending.  So where's the money to pay for all this stuff?  Why, with the capitalists, of course.  They've been skimming buttloads of it for decades now.  They've got it.  That's where the money is.  So let's just go and take it.  No problem.

Of course, standing in the way of taxing the very wealthy is the incredibly successful propaganda effort the capitalist class has financed and executed in order to create their now favorable situation.  Numerous Americans have been so conditioned to believe the BS narrative of business owners being the wellspring of all prosperity that they unwittingly sympathize with the very forces that are ripping them off.  But I think that's changing.  I think people are starting to see that we are well into America's second Gilded Age.  I think people are opening up to new, that is to say, old, ideas.

And we can do this. 

I mean, if we're going to let capitalists fleece Americans of their rightfully earned pay, this is the only way to respond.  Don't even try to characterize this with the dreaded Fox News sinisterism "redistribution."  The actual redistribution happens on the job when businesses refuse to compensate their labor fairly.  Seriously.  Some economists believe we could go as high as an eighty percent tax rate on the very wealthy without it having adverse effects on the economy.  I'm not necessarily advocating that.  But it should definitely be on the table.  We're fools for not discussing, at least, going long on this.  In the end, it may be the only way to do it.

I mean, short of a return of a strong labor movement.  That would work, too.

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