We'll have to rebuild our infrastructure someday. When everything starts collapsing -- even more than it is right now -- that kind of deal may not be available.
Build, Cut, Teach
What else should we be doing besides rebuilding our country's crumbling physical plant?
We need to cut the military -- not just slow the rate of increased spending, as the Obama budget does, but decrease it in hard-dollar terms. That's money we really can't afford. We can't afford to lose our young troops to injury and death in unnecessary wars, either.
We need to fix our health care system -- really fix it. Because you know what we really can't afford? We can't afford to let our runaway for-profit healthcare system force us to pay so much more than other industrialized countries are paying, for worse outcomes and with a much higher rate of inflation. That means real negotiation on drug prices, eliminating greed in billing and overtreatment, and building a public insurance system that's available to everyone.
We need to teach our kids. We need to fully fund education, preschool through grade 12, and we need to make college affordable again. That means re-financing the public university system and making sure that low-cost loans are available to every student that needs one.
Tax the Rich, Increase Social Security
The richest people in this country have enjoyed an unprecedented run of income appropriation, capturing more of this nation's income than at any time in modern history.
They've lived like kings, queens, Pharoahs, and pashas. They'll still live that way, even when they're paying Nixon-era rates of 50 to 70 percent on the highest levels of income (in the multi-million dollar range).
And we need to increase Social Security, not cut it. Its benefits have not been keeping up with the real increases in living costs faced by seniors and the disabled. That needs to be rectified. And since Wall Street and other cop orate greed has damaged our destroyed the other two legs of the retirement "stool" -- real estate and pensions -- Social Security has become even more important.
Social Security's benefits should be increased, the payroll tax cap should immediately be readjusted to cover 95 or 100 percent of income, and additional benefit increases could be subsidized with a financial transaction tax that would also discourage a little bit of that reckless Wall Street gambling.
So now what?
Where are the political leaders who will argue for these things? The Democratic Party's been an uncertain trumpet for a long time, but it has gone almost completely silent.
Who will fight for these simple, popular, and fair ideas? And what do we do about those Democrats in Washington? If the Republicans get into power they'll wreak unthinkable havoc on an already-damaged nation. But merely re-electing the same old Democratic crowd isn't going to be enough. We'll need a strategy -- one that thinks beyond merely voting for Democrats, one that envisions a bolder movement that isn't tied to a party or ideology.
In other words, yes: We do need a Tea Party of the left.
The left's strategy is the subject of heated debate right now, of course, which allows me an opportunity to introduce a shameless but entirely appropriate plug for the American Dream conference next week in Washington DC. I'll be there, on a panel with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Heather McGhee of Demos, and MSNBC's Alex Wagner. Paul Krugman will be there too. And Katrina Vanden Heuvel and ... well, and a lot of folks, debating exactly these sorts of issues.
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