Why Americans Are So Angry by Senator Bernie Sanders

[FORD]

Why Americans Are So Angry
By Senator Bernie Sanders

July 28, 2011

Wall Street Journal


The rich are getting richer. Their effective tax rate, in recent years, has been reduced to the lowest in modern history. Nurses, teachers and firemen actually pay a higher tax rate than some billionaires. It's no wonder the American people are angry.

Many corporations, including General Electric and Exxon-Mobil, have made billions in profits while using loopholes to avoid paying any federal income taxes. We lose $100 billion every year in federal revenue from companies and individuals who stash their wealth in tax havens off-shore like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. The sum of all the revenue collected by the Treasury today totals just 14.8% of our gross domestic product, the lowest in about 50 years.

In the midst of this, Republicans in Congress have been fanatically determined to protect the interests of the wealthy and large multinational corporations so that they do not contribute a single penny toward deficit reduction.

If the Republicans have their way, the entire burden of deficit reduction will be placed on the elderly, the sick, children and working families. In the midst of a horrendous recession that is already causing severe pain for average Americans, this approach is morally grotesque. It's also bad economic policy.

President Obama and the Democrats have been extremely weak in opposing these right-wing extremist proposals. Although the United States now has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major industrialized country, Democrats have not succeeded in getting any new revenue from those at the top of the economic ladder to reduce the deficit.

Why Americans Are so Angry

Instead, they've handed the wealthy even more tax breaks. In December, the House and the Senate extended President George W. Bush's tax cuts for the rich and lowered estate tax rates for the wealthiest Americans. In April, to avoid the Republican effort to shut down the government, they allowed $38.5 billion in cuts to vitally important programs for working-class and middle-class Americans.

Now, with the U.S. facing the possibility of the first default in our nation's history, the American people find themselves forced to choose between two congressional deficit-reduction plans. The plan by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, which calls for $2.4 trillion in cuts over a 10-year period, includes $900 billion in cuts in areas such as education, health care, nutrition, affordable housing, child care and many other programs desperately needed by working families and the most vulnerable.

The Senate plan appropriately calls for meaningful cuts in military spending and ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But it does not ask the wealthiest people in this country and the largest corporations to make any sacrifice.

The Reid plan is bad. The constantly shifting plan by House Speaker John Boehner is much worse. His $1.2 trillion plan calls for no cuts in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it requires a congressional committee to come up with another $1.8 trillion in cuts within six months of passage.

Those cuts would mean drastic reductions in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. What's more, Mr. Boehner's plan would reopen the debate over the debt ceiling, which is now paralyzing Congress, just six months from now.

While all of this is going on in Washington, the American people have consistently stated, in poll after poll, that they want wealthy individuals and large corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. They also want bedrock social programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to be protected. For example, a July 14-17 Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 72% of Americans believe that Americans earning more than $250,000 a year should pay more in taxes.

In other words, Congress is now on a path to do exactly what the American people don't want. Americans want shared sacrifice in deficit reduction. Congress is on track to give them the exact opposite: major cuts in the most important programs that the middle class needs and wants, and no sacrifice from the wealthy and the powerful.

Is it any wonder, therefore, that the American people are so angry with what's going on in Washington? I am too.

Mr. Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, is a member of the Senate Budget Committee.

[jhale667]

Holy crap you're fast, dude...I just got an email about Sander's post...

[FORD]

I'm on Bernie's list too. That's how I got the link.

[Nitro Express]

That's why we need to dump the national income tax and go with a national value added tax at a flat rate. No political games, simple, and the rich pay more because they buy more. The big question is where do all the out of work tax lawyers and tax accountants get a job?

Let's say I'm a billionare. I get tax breaks in this current market. What would I do with the money? I would invest in derivatives instead of investing in job producing productive means. I would have no interest in creating trickle down jobs. Making money in the derivatives market is much easier plus with Obama in office nobody can do five year planning because they don't know what their taxes and healthcare burdon are going to be. That's the goddammed truth.

The reality is we already have enough tax revenue coming in but the problem is we are wasting it. The Republicans won't even bring up military spending cuts and we can't even audit where that money goes. All we know is trillions of dollars seem to dissapear with not much to show for it. So the deffense spending should be a center of stage issue for everyone. As far as the fear of getting no social security and all that, the money is there and if that money has been stolen the government is obligated to pay it back into the trust. Besides. The mother fuckers tax your social security check.

[Nitro Express]

In other words, Congress is now on a path to do exactly what the American people don't want. Americans want shared sacrifice in deficit reduction. Congress is on track to give them the exact opposite: major cuts in the most important programs that the middle class needs and wants, and no sacrifice from the wealthy and the powerful.

Nobody seemed to care when mortgages were easy and the stock market was booming. The so call average American took their eye off the political process and fell for the Federal Reserve's pump and dump. The bankers planned all this knowing they were politically connected enough to get bailed out. Now they are making record money and own about every politician in Washington DC. A beautiful Cout de ta without a shot being fired. The American people were simply duped with their own short term greed because nobody in their right mind would allow themselves to be that leveraged by the banks.

So now everyone is angry. So what. What's the sollution? There is always somone hiding in the grass waiting to take everything away from you and if you let your guard down, they come in and take. The American people let their guard down and it took a left hook to the face to wake them up. So are we going to turn the ship now? It will take several election cycles and many years to do so.

[FORD]

Look at the period where this country was unquestionably doing the best, in fiscal terms, and there's no mistake about it. It was the era after World War II up until 1980.

When FDR's policies protected the American people, including small businesses, and even after JFK's tax cuts in the 60's, the rich still paid reasonable taxes.

All of that has been systematically destroyed over the last 30 years, and its no coincidence that this country is heading right back to Herbert Hooverville as a result.

We need to roll back every economic & tax policy to the Carter era, and we need to do it NOW. Pass it as an emergency action in the name of "Homeland Security". Because unlike the piece of shit Patriot Act, or wars based on lies, this really IS exactly that.

[jhale667]

The reality is we already have enough tax revenue coming in but

That would sound almost believable had the Bush tax cuts for the rich been allowed to expire like they should have...

[Nitro Express]

We are currently borrowing 40% of what we spend. The Federal Reserve Bank is now our biggest creditor so the Fed owns our ass and the Fed is the banks. Compared to what we are spending any increased revenue from taxes is chicken feed. Spending is a bigger issue. But the average American doesn't understand basic banking let alone fractional reserve central banking so the politicians point their finger at the rich. They brew up the class war show. People don't even know who the rich are. I will give you a hint. They sit on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank and they pay zero taxes and have no loyalty to any country. It's all globalism for them and then you consolidate all the central banks in the Bank of International Settlements. Everything else doesn't mean shit unless we can issue dollars as a public utility through the US Treasury Department instead of having this international banking cartel run out country. Nobody gets it. They just want Steve Balmer to pay more taxes.

Then there is the value of the dollar itself. How many zeros do we want to add? Will anyone else in the world want it after Ben Bernake floods the earth with it and they no longer have to buy oil in it. Here's my fucking solution. Inflate the value to zero and multiply the debt by that. We erase it in one swoop. Call it the failure of the Fed and the reissue US Treasury backed public utility dollars. Kennedy had the right idea. Then you replace the Federal Reserve notes in certain selected accounts with the US Treasury notes so the decent people lose nothing and refuse to replace federal reserve notes in the crooked accounts. So the average America an't out shit and the big speculating mother fuckers hold inflated to oblivion paper. That's how your get the mother fuckers and that is why they guard their Federal Reserve ponzi scheme like pitbulls.

Then we can give the average American their beer, BBQ, and football game back and keep them happy until they get duped by the next group of con artists.

[Seshmeister]

That's why we need to dump the national income tax and go with a national value added tax at a flat rate. No political games, simple, and the rich pay more because they buy more.

VAT is not progressive taxation. The poor would end up paying a much much higher percentage of their income than the wealthy, but I think you know that and want to screw them up even more.