Nobody talks about RAISING REVENUE. Why? Bank robber Willie Sutton, when asked why he robbed banks, famously--or apocraphyly--said, because that’s where the money is. I ask you: WHERE IS THE MONEY TODAY? If you say, in the BANK ACCOUNTS of the top one- or two- or three-percent of AMERICANS, then you’ve got your answer.
It’s staring us in the face. SEE ME! It’s shouting at us. I’M OVER HERE. It’s not playing games, it’s not in hiding. It’s NOT hide-and-seek. Since THAT’S WHERE THE MONEY IS, and since many WEALTHY Americans are REASONABLE Americans, they agree. WE’RE HERE! Take our money. We have more than we or our families need, more than we could ever spend. HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS. TENS OF BILLIONS. If we’d turn away from our FEAR OF encroaching SOCIALISM and listened, we might just hear some of them shouting: TAKE IT. This country has made us RICH: they know it; they like it; they don’t want to lose it. TAKE IT BEFORE IT TAKES US DOWN. Take it to build back our INFRASTRUCTURE. To create JOBS for those who desperately have to work. To pay ordinary, household bills. TAKE IT, PLEASE. Take it before we LOSE our Nation--and the SOURCE of our wealth.
Listen to those at the Wealth For The Common Good Web site:
Press Release: Millionaires Urge Rejection of Bush Tax Cuts for Rich – 12/8/10
Wealth for the Common Good is a network of business and civic leaders, wealthy individuals and partners, promoting fair and adequate taxation to support public investment in a healthy economy.
Over the last 30 years, we have disproportionately benefited from economic policy. We feel it’s time to rebalance the economy so that it works for everyone — not just the wealthy. Our country is facing unprecedented economic challenges right now: We all need to pay our fair share to resolve these issues and make long overdue investments in education, health, energy and infrastructure.
It is powerful when those who would pay a tax speak publicly on its behalf. It’s important that we let our elected officials know that there are thousands of us who would pay more — pay our fair share — to invest in the country.
On the other hand, there’s the Fox non-News spin machine, the anti-American, anti-democratic, Fox non-News spin machine:
The Fox non-News spin machine, at the service of conservative, anti-democratic, corporate interests, has concocted a coalition of FEAR-DRIVEN, fundamentalist Christians, upwardly-mobile suburban, college-educated corporate conservatives, and white senior-citizens, AMERICANS who greatly FEAR that they will lose what they have to poor, non-white SOCIALISTS--to those who, they say, expect the government from cradle-to-grave to tax those who are on the way UP and slowly becoming WEALTHY to provide for services to those who are on the way DOWN and slowly becoming POOR.
If this is not a clash of cultures and a CLASSIC class-struggle, I don’t know what is. Raising REVENUE has to come back into fashion for the WEALTHY because their share of the Nation’s earnings has far-outpaced everybody else’s. Is the Tea Party the tip of the iceberg? If it is, why is it a Republican thing? Do liberals and/or progressives and/or Democrats not PUSH for changes in the tax laws to RAISE REVENUE because they fear a backlash from the electorate and from noisy, conservative Talk Radio? What has happened to the Civic Pride that I first learned in Grade School: that as AMERICANS we are UNIQUE because we VOTE and because we freely pay our taxes to support the PUBLIC GOOD and to DEFEND the Nation. Why has the Public Good become stigmatized as welfare, or SOCIALISM? Every –ism has its good and its bad side. Some –isms, yes, are more bad than good. Understood.
But is the Nation not a better nation if its People live in safe neighborhoods and if they work together and if they build together and if they share in building cities and schools that enhance and ennoble their lives. Is the Nation not a better nation if its People RESPECT one another? Is the Nation not a better nation if its People struggle to solve Common problems and differences rather than dissolve them in HATRED and in DIVISION?
If we believe that a house divided cannot stand, why do we enshrine division? Are we not a HOUSE? Are we not One Nation? Does it make sense for us to continue to DIVIDE ourselves into The Haves and the Have-Nots? Did not FDR and Social Security begin to bridge that divide? Did not LBJ and Medicare and Civil Rights struggle to bridge that divided? Can we as a Nation achieve these AMERICAN IDEALS if we are not fair and equal citizens, UNDER THE LAW, who live in good health and with the PROMISE of LIFE and LIBERTY for all?
That’s all I ask.