In addition, products that most Americans have come to rely on in our modern industrial/technological society are composed of heavy metals as well as over 85,000 synthetic chemicals, the majority of which have not been adequately tested or regulated for safety, 7 but many of which have demonstrated the potential for carcinogenic, teratogenic, or endocrine disrupting effects. The wealth of the richest individuals and corporations in America rests on the use of these chemicals which have already contributed to the worldwide explosion of cancer, reproductive abnormalities, and species extinctions, among other devastating health impacts. Synthetic chemicals, fossil fuels, and other toxic substances have permeated our very life-support systems -- our air and our water -- from the rampant industrialization of the past two centuries. Indeed, it is nearly impossible to find a place in America or the world untouched by the blight of toxic pollutants. Persistent organic molecules run amok in the bodies of organisms all over the globe. The blood, urine, and breastmilk of humans and other mammals are completely tainted by the load of toxicants within. Yet again, the costs of cleaning up (if that is even possible) the tremendous amounts of pollution or of dealing with the effects of such toxicants on organisms and ecosystems falls to governments and their taxpayers rather than to the polluters themselves, all of whom have accrued great fortune through their environmental degradation.
The final deleterious effect of corporations - and the
richest Americans who garnered their wealth from these entities - is labor
exploitation and poverty. As Charles Kernagan, director of the Institute for
Global Labour and Human Rights, states, corporations have perfected "the
science of exploitation." 8 They use the labor of workers
as efficiently as they possibly can, according to statistical calculations and
legal regulations. Furthermore, these same corporations and the rich people who
run them have utilized their enormous financial assets to influence labor laws
and public perception of labor (via mass media, which they often also
financially control). As such, labor unions have nearly disintegrated in America, and resultantly,
wages have stagnated, benefits have disappeared and/or become unaffordable, and
unemployment has skyrocketed. Hence, citizens are more than ever in need of
public assistance to maintain a basic level of comfort, to obtain basic
necessities of life. This assistance comes in the form of governmental social
welfare programs, paid for by taxpayers. In fact, Wal-mart is well known to
encourage its employees to apply for public assistance, 9 as the wages of workers at
Wal-mart are insufficient to live on, despite the fact that its owners are
among the ten wealthiest people in the U.S. Once again, the bulk of the
population pays taxes to assist those in need, while the neediest among us are
in that position precisely because of the greed of the wealthiest among us.
Perhaps what is most pernicious about the rich in America is that not only do they create the environmental, medical, and social illnesses in our society, which we pay to remediate, but that we actually pay THEM to do so. The roads, buildings, utilities, and infrastructures that the corporations rely on are built by federal and local tax dollars. The U.S. military, which has been historically utilized around the world to secure natural resources for our corporations, comprises 19% of our national budget, 10 plus a good bulk of our discretionary spending. Major corporations like Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, Halliburton and Bechtel, and the rich who run them, directly profit from our spending on war. Furthermore, corporations routinely receive tax benefits and subsidies from the government to perform their services and produce their goods (or "bads" as the case may be). However, corporations only contribute 10% of the total tax revenue of the federal government compared to the 46% of governmental tax money generated by individual incomes. 10 Further still, lower-income individuals contribute a far larger proportion of their incomes to taxes 11 than do wealthier individuals and corporations. What is worse, many of the lowest-income citizens barely earn enough to live, yet they are forced to subsidize - through their tax dollars - the wealthiest, most destructive citizens and corporations.
Frankly, the question of whether the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share of taxes should be scoffed at. Anyone who does not see the deterioration of our ecological and social environments, anyone who does not detect the imminent debacle that is anthropogenic global warming, anyone who does not notice the lethal and sub-lethal health effects of our human-induced toxification of our planet, 12 and anyone who does not witness the unbridled proliferation of poverty and misery in our nation is asleep. Moreover, anyone who cannot correlate these ills with the promulgation of industrialization and of the acquisition of obscene corporate and individual profit in the richest among us is deluding herself. Though correlation does not necessarily indicate causation, causation can often be inferred when substantial evidence is overwhelming. The wealthiest 1% of Americans, including the corporations for whom most of them work, directly and indirectly reap the majority of the benefits of U.S. taxes while creating the problems which our tax dollars pay to mitigate. Therefore, it is only just that they should pay all taxes in America and at the very least, help enable the rest of us to live amongst their wreckage.
Copyright 2014 Kristine Mattis
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License
References:
1 Piff, P. K., Stancato, D. M., Côté, S., Mendoza-Denton, R. & Keltner, D. Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doi:10.1073/pnas.1118373109 (2012).
2 Urstadt, B. in Bloomberg Businessweek (Bloomberg, L.P, New York, NY, 2011).
3 Kraus, M. W., Piff, P. K. & Keltner, D. Social Class as Culture: The Convergence of Resources and Rank in the Social Realm. Current Directions in Psychological Science 20, 246-250, doi:10.1177/0963721411414654 (2011).
4 Forbes, s. The Forbes 400: The Richest People in America. Forbes (2013).
5 Forbes, s. America's Largest Private Companies. Forbes (2007). <http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/21/biz_privates07_Americas-Largest-Private-Companies_Rank.html?boxes=custom>.
6 CNNMoney, s. Global 500. CNNMoney (2012). <http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2012/full_list/>.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
2
2
