Although the McCourts, owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers, spent $45 million in one year, they avoided paying any taxes by borrowing against Dodger ticket revenue and other assets, as revealed by journalist David Cay Johnston in Willamette Week (wweek.com).
So what are the solutions? What can we do to even the playing field, ensure that workers are fairly compensated for their toil, protect our democracy, invigorate our electorate, protect our environment, and provide a future of opportunity for the next generation? The first step is reforming our tax code. Let's make it look more like it did before Reagan; let's raise the highest income bracket again so that there is precious little incentive to pay executives (even those who drive their companies into the ground) $4000 an hour while the workers who build the widgets make $10 an hour.
Let's reform the tax code so that investors and hedge fund managers pay the same tax rate as people who build wind turbines for a living. Better yet, let's ban the craziest hedge funds and "derivatives', which are nothing more than giant casino games and are multiplying like rabbits. The concept began with farmers who wanted to ensure that grain and other agricultural commodity prices wouldn't fluctuate too much. Now, there are derivatives that allow investors to bet on when pensioners will die. If they die sooner than actuaries predicted, investors win. Derivatives were at the root of the mortgage melt down and the spikes in gas prices. If they aren't controlled and largely eliminated, they will continue to wreak havoc on our economy.
It's also time to make criminals pay. Those who took down our economy should be in jail. Those who violate our laws for material gain, including the Koch brothers, should be sent up the river. As long as financial crime pays, society will continue to pay the price of a faltering economy.
What about our huge deficit and national debt? Our national debt is about $15 trillion, an incomprehensible sum to most. With huge budget deficits each year over the past decade, the situation has been growing worse. According to the New York Times ("America's Sea of Red Ink was Years in the Making," June 9, 2009), the deterioration of our budget situation has been caused by recessions or the business cycle (37%), George W. Bush's policies (e.g., starting two wars of choice) (33%), the continuation of Bush's policies by Obama (20%), and new Obama policies (10%).
As we know, the recession was caused largely by Bush's mortgage crisis. But we continue to spend trillions on Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Occupy Wall Street protesters are calling for an end to these outrageous expenses. Not only are they driving our economy into the ground, they are also creating yet another group of disabled veterans (both physically and psychologically); and they are damaging our reputation abroad. If Obama wants to leave behind a stable Afghanistan, he could accomplish more with much less by providing humanitarian aid instead of dropping bombs on villages.
To bring about real change, we need to elect real progressives, that is, people who want to make life better for ordinary citizens. Progressives ended the abuses of child labor, gave women the vote, and created National Parks. Progressives support the protection of workers from abuses like being forced to work with dangerous chemicals without proper protections or in mines that are not properly maintained. Progressives support the protection of the environment not only for the sake of public health but also for the sake of the wildlife we share this planet with.
It's up to us, not just the Occupy Wall Street protesters, to put America back on the right track. And that track tends toward the progressive left.
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