The Road To Revolution –
Paved By Arrogance And Greed
By Ron Forthofer
15 June, 2009
Countercurrents.org
Partly as a result of the unbridled greed of many in the financial, insurance and real estate (FIRE) sectors, Americans have seen trillions of dollars in their retirement accounts and trillions more in housing values evaporate. Besides these huge losses, since December 2007, 5.7 million jobs have been lost, jobs that totaled perhaps two hundred billion in wages annually. Eight-to-ten million families have or are likely to face foreclosure. Adding to the pain, future generations are on the hook for trillions of dollars more due to the bailout of those who caused this disaster. Amazingly, as if Americans haven't suffered enough, some politicians and pundits are now calling for reductions in Social Security and Medicare benefits. Talk about your chutzpah!
Some pushing these reductions claim that they are doing it to protect the U.S.'s credit rating. They point to an estimated unfunded obligation of $6.6 trillion over the next 75 years for Social Security and another $36.3 trillion of unfunded obligations for Medicare by 2082. These are indeed scary values, but the size of the problem is greatly magnified by the use of a 75-year period. However, when contrasted with the approximately $13 trillion already committed or spent on the bailout of the FIRE sectors in the past two years, these numbers don't seem quite as daunting.
Let's consider some approaches for improving the U.S.'s financial condition that don't inflict even more pain on the overwhelming majority of Americans.
* Eliminate Bush's tax cuts while retaining the Alternative Minimum Tax relief. It is infuriating that many of these people pushing for benefit reductions in Social Security and Medicare were supportive of Bush's costly tax cuts. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that the impact of these tax cuts, if made permanent after 2010, along with the Alternative Minimum Tax relief, would be about $8.4 trillion from 2001 to 2018. This already huge value would continue to grow rapidly after 2018, leading to another even far more frightening value if extended over a 75-year period.
* Remove the cap on contributions to Social Security. Currently, wages above $106,800 are not taxed for Social Security. Removing the cap would affect less than 6% of all employees while, at the same time, greatly reducing the projected Social Security funding deficit.
* Reform the entire healthcare system, not just Medicare. If we were to implement a publicly funded universal healthcare system (single payer), a 2005 study by Kenneth Thorpe for the National Coalition on Health Care projected a $1.1 trillion savings in the first ten years of operation. The single-payer approach would also allow the government to negotiate drug prices, something that Congress prohibited in the 2003 Medicare drug legislation. This ban provides the pharmaceutical industry with huge amounts in corporate welfare each year. Yet the Congressional leadership and the White House have continually said that the single-payer approach is off the table. Failure to adopt single payer will provide trillions in corporate welfare to the health insurance industry over 75 years.
* End the costly occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Several years ago, the estimated long-term cost of just the Iraqi invasion and occupation was $3 trillion. The cost of both of these unwarranted and failed occupations continues to grow.
* Reduce U.S. military spending. Currently the U.S. surpasses the rest of the world combined in military spending. The U.S. provides massive amounts of corporate welfare to the military/industrial complex by funding weapons programs that are designed for fighting past wars, not current ones. If we reduced our military budget by half, we would still spend far more than necessary to defend the U.S. militarily. The projected savings from this reduction over 75 years would likely be over $25 trillion. We could also save an enormous amount over 75 years by eliminating most, if not all, of our over 700 military bases worldwide.
* Eliminate taxes on desirable behavior and increase taxes on potentially harmful acts. For example, we want people to work, but we don't want huge inequalities in wealth. Therefore, don't tax income less than $100,000, but do implement a progressive tax on income above $100,000. Given the lessons of the current financial disaster, we don't want to encourage gambling. Therefore tax speculation by charging 0.5% of the value of financial/currency and other speculative transactions. Since we don't want pollution, tax contamination of our air, water and ground. An article by James Robertson in the April 1996 New Internationalist magazine (http://www.newint.org/issue278/taxes.htm) discusses green taxes.
Clearly there are numerous ways of improving the financial health of the U.S. while helping most Americans. However, the financial/political elites continue to focus on programs that enrich themselves and harm most of us. So far it appears that these arrogant elites are unaware or disdainful of our anger and suffering. These elites run the risk that Americans will finally say enough at some point. Will Americans rise up? We shall see.
