This posting was inspired by an article at Rational Revolution. It takes another look at the disproportionate shift in income to the mega and ultra rich, the disproportionate tax breaks for the mega and ultra rich, and the creation of national and personal debt not seen since the Great Depression.

The similarities of the Great Depression of the last century to this century’s Great Recession on certain key measurements are critical to our future. Come the midterm elections and beyond, we can continue the destruction of the American middle class or continue the hard changes that have only just begun to rebuild the middle class.

Remember the trickle down theory of supply side economics that was supposed to result from tax breaks for the rich? Well, here’s a recent example of how trickle down works decades after it was started and has since been amplified: LeBron is promised $125,000,000.00 while 30 of the teams’ support employees are fired.

No matter how much LeBron makes or how little he pays in income taxes, those 30 former employees are screwed. This is exactly what has happened to many more Americans since the right-wing authoritarians (RWA) have been running our economy and giving disproportionate and extreme advantages to the really rich. There are now more mega and ultra rich people in this nation, but there are many, many more middle class households that have gone into debt with easy credit, lost their jobs, lost their homes, and declared bankruptcy. Middle class America is being replaced by a plutocracy. I’d call this a legalized Ponzi Scheme, which is trickle-up economics.

Didn’t the course change started in November 2008 mean stop and fix what’s wrong!

Let’s review the situation created by the RWAs. Instead of continuing to grow the income of everyone, as was done after WWII, we are now only helping the rich become the mega and ultra rich. While most of us, the Bottom 90 Percent, have seen our income gains drop more than 50 percent, the Top 1 Percent have seen their income gains grow by more than 50 percent. Notice in the chart below how today’s share of income growth for the mega rich is just as high as it was before the Great Depression.

(Note the slight recovery in income gains for the middle class during the Clinton years.)

In terms of income growth by income group for before and after the RWAs took over, this shift is even more dramatic for the mega rich vs everyone else. Prior to Voodoo Economics, 1947 to 1979, income growth was fairly even – then the legalized trickle-up Ponzi Scheme started.

The Trickle Up Truth

As shown in an earlier posting and to highlight the current effect of trickle-up, the average income of the top 1 percent in 2005, as reported to the the IRS, was $1,200,000.00 and the average for the bottom 99 percent was $45,000.00.

Let’s take a closer look at some of those in that top 1 percent. The chart below compares the income growth of corporate executives. These mega rich are rich, not because they produce something, but because they are mostly accountable to fund managers who, as share holders, vote for excessive salaries to get the ‘best’ CEOs money can buy who will then protect the fund’s value. Notice the only metric doing worse than the average worker is the minimum wage.

Then there are the ultra rich hedge fund managers, who, unlike the middle class, have mostly investment income which is taxed at rates far less than the marginal income tax rate for earned income. Can you imagine making billions of dollars and only paying 15 percent to the government? And they still want more tax breaks? To be clear, the top salary for 2007 was $3,700,000,000.00. That’s 177 times more income than Lebron James 6 year contract. That must correlate to thousands of more unemployed middle class Americans?

Now add to these lopsided gains in income growth the increased tax breaks for major corporations and you see another reason for this shift in wealth to the rich. Their METRs have dropped by more than 30 percent while their contribution to our federal revenue has been cut in half:

This chart only applies to corporations who have stayed in America for tax purposes.

(And now thanks to our “activist” Supreme Court, more corporate profits can go to PACs for controlling our government.)

Then, as shown below, there are the increased tax breaks on earned income. They have also been disproportionately reduced for the wealthy who are still mostly ‘earning’ their income. (Without this reduction it’s harder for the wealthy to become mega rich and move to unearned income.) The second chart below shows the marginal tax for any earned income and the growth in income for the ultra rich, the top 0.1 percent.

60 Years of Republican Tax Breaks for the Wealthy

The above earned income tax rates for the wealthy do not account for the even greater advantages that the mega and ultra rich have with even lower capital gains taxes for unearned income. For the top 400 taxpayers, less than 10 percent of their income is “earned” and subject to the marginal tax rates. Most of their income is taxed at the lower capital gains tax rate.

As the charts above show, the mega and ultra rich are getting disproportionately richer – their income growth is far outpacing that of the middle class – and their tax breaks are much more favorable! Most of us were fooled into believing there was trickle down – that’s what the RWA have told us. In reality, we have trickle-up and there is only the perception of income growth for the middle class from households with two incomes and going into debt up to our collective eyeballs. There is no trickle down when income growth and tax breaks have become so lopsided. Millions have lost their jobs as a few hundred have made billions without producing anything. These mega and ultra rich are sitting at the top of our legalized Ponzi Scheme and the middle class is disappearing.

Unlike the situation in WWII where everyone helped pay the nation’s bills, the RWA have reduced taxes, especially for the rich, and borrowed from other nations to pay for our wars and other expenses. The result of decades of tax breaks for the rich, the rich keeping too much of their excessive income, and enormous expenses for our military on top of our other federal expenditures, our national deficit has grown over 55 percent under the rule of RWAs and their Great Recession.

Not only has the nation’s debt escalated for decades, so has our personal debt. Citizens have borrowed like never before and we feel richer and believe that it’s trickling down from the rich that were given all those tax breaks. In addition, the government encouraged borrowing, corporations took advantage of lower rates, and the mega rich investors created innovative methods to maximize their unearned, under-taxed, income by encouraging the middle class to go into debt.

Household debt: Credit card debt, car loans, personal loans and home mortgages

How unfair is all this? Under the rule of the RWAs, most citizen’s personal debt has more than doubled and is near the levels that preceded the Great Depression, while at the same time income for the mega rich is as high as it was prior to the Great Depression.

This has to stop!!!

But if you don’t agree and if you want more disproportionate tax breaks for the mega and ultra rich, and for the corporations that make unlimited political contributions, if you want more national and personal debt, and if you want others to pay our debt so we can continue shopping, vote for RWA in November.

Remember, RWA are also known as “Conservatives without Conscience” and they are mostly common to the Republican and Libertarian party. A few, Blue Dogs, exist in the Democratic party.

Vote Republican? – Vote Ponzi.

The table below is mostly from an October 4, 2007 News Release from the conservative Tax Foundation. They point out that the richest 1% of the tax payers pay more in total taxes than the poorer 90 percent – those that make less than $103,912 a year. (These data are for tax year 2005.)

The last three rows of this table were extrapolated from the original table and added to show the bottom 90, 95 and 99 percentile groups. Adding these rows shows that the bottom 99 percent pay 54 percent more in taxes than the top 1 percent. I think the top 1 percent should pay as much in taxes as the bottom 99 percent – and it won’t cost them that much, see below.

What the Tax Foundation didn’t mention in the article, see new table below, is that the average income for the top 1% is $1,200,280 and the average income for everyone else is $45,064. No wonder the top 1% pay such a large portion of total taxes collected – they earn, on average, 27 times more than the bottom 99 percent and earn at least $364,657 a year. Factor in that their effective tax rate is only 2.4 times greater than the rest of us, and you can realize just how much empathy we should feel for them. (Data in this table were extrapolated from the one above.)

Making the richest 1 percent pay the same in total taxes as all the rest of us would raise their effective tax rate from 23.1 percent to 35.6 percent. At that rate, the average income for the mega rich, after paying taxes, would only be $773,039. The poorest among the top 1 percent would be left with just $237,077. How could they possibly survive? What real need would they have to give up?

As I wrote in a previous posting, “It’s time we all realize that … tax cuts favoring the very wealthy are not what America needs.”

In American, personal wealth will be redistributed one of two ways: taxation and accountability, or the lack thereof. Will redistribution recreate a wealthy aristocracy this nation rebelled against long ago, or will it provide for the common good and give all citizens an equal chance at creating their own wealth?

America’s wealth redistribution will either benefit all of us or a select few at the expense of all of us. America’s wealth redistribution will either raise all boats or only those that can be well maintained. America’s wealth redistribution will either enrich the common good or engorge the well off. America’s wealth redistribution will either create and maintain a foundation for our democracy and our infrastructure, or let both crumble for the sake of self-interest. America’s wealth redistribution will either protect citizens and their shared resources from abuse or empower the abusers as they ravage the shared resources and protect their ‘individual’ gains. America’s wealth redistribution will either empower all citizens to become wealthy or empower a few to control most of the nation’s wealth. America’s wealth redistribution will either provide for a broad based common wealth, which gives all citizens a equal chance for success and building personal wealth, or will concentrate wealth and power in a very wealthy aristocracy.

For the last 60 years, our tax laws have favored the very wealthy at the expense of other Americans not like them. The tax cuts for the wealthy are highlighted by the chart below which shows the drop in the highest tax rate between 1945 and 2008.

60 Years of Tax Cuts for the Rich

As detailed in another posting, the impact of the above tax cuts has given 16 percent of American families, those who make over $105,000, a 361 percent greater tax cut than the other 84 percent of American families. America’s growing, but young, plutocracy is becoming wealthier and more powerful.

To these tax cuts, add the surreptitious use of privateering. Privateering takes a portion of the remaining tax revenues and diverts it to companies like Blackwater and other sole-source defense contractors, or to ‘too-big-to-fail’ banks. And so the wealthy CEOs get richer still and more powerful.

This redistribution of the nation’s wealth to the wealthy is also shown by the chart below. It shows how family income distribution has changed from 1945 (blue) to 1970 (green) to 2008 (yellow). (All incomes were adjusted to 2008 dollars.)

Through Tax Reduction The Nation’s Income Goes to the Rich

(Data for this chart were obtained from the Census Bureau: 1945, 1970 to 2008.)

In 1945, while all citizens were helping to fund their share of the common wealth, only 6.6 percent of the nation’s income wealth was distributed to those making more than $75,000. (In 1945, taxation was based on funding the common wealth to protect and empower all citizens. This progressive taxation also took into account the effects of systemic causation. This progressive taxation was exemplified by the tax rates during WWII, which included up to 32 brackets and rates that ranged from 10 percent to 94 percent.)

By 1970, after the highest tax rate was dropped by more than 30 percent, that same group tripled their share of the nation’s income to 18.3 percent. By 2008, even more favorable tax cuts allowed the wealthy to keep even more of their income. Now they capture 32.4 percent of the nation’s income wealth – about a five fold increase from 1945.

Of course, while this transfer of wealth to the rich was happening, the funding of our common wealth was reduced just as dramatically. Now a college education is becoming affordable for only the very rich and grades K-12 are underfunded and failing in more and more public school districts as tax cuts rule. Now citizens die from food poisoning and inadequately tested drugs due to lack of independent inspectors which are paid with falling tax revenues. Now our nation and state infrastructures are literally falling down or being overwhelmed by nature and citizens die as a direct result of tax cuts. Now we have to borrow from other nations to pay our war bills and bank CEO’s bonuses. Now we have corporations that build facilities that electrocute our troops so they can maximize their profit. Now we have a health insurance system that lets 45,000 Americans die to maximize CEO bonuses.

As the wealthy have become disproportionately wealthier and more powerful, what has happened to accountability for the nation’s wealth between 1945 and 2008? In 1945, with highest tax rates at 94 percent, all families were proportionately funding our common wealth – our elected officials were accountable to the voters for our common wealth and used it to protect and empower all citizens. In 2008, with the highest tax rate at 39 percent, mega rich individuals, who have gained the most from the nation’s common wealth, became accountable – to themselves and to shareholders.

This difference in the distribution of wealth and whose accountability for the redistribution is explained by the strict father family model of conservatives without conscience (CWC) and the nurturant family model of progressives. As stated by George Lakoff in Making Accountability Accountable ” To progressives, it [accountability] means social as well as personal responsibility — responsibility for both oneself and everyone else who could be harmed by one’s failure. To conservatives, it means individual responsibility only.”

In other words, for CWCs, the individual is solely accountable for their wealth and they have no responsibility for other Americans not like them. Nor do they believe that other factors have an impact on their wealth. They believe they are in control. For progressives, the individual and various systemic factors like the family you were born into and the availability of a good education, contribute to an individuals wealth. Progressives also believe we are all accountable for our effects on others. They that hold our elected officials are accountable for America’s common wealth and will not support those officials that show favoritism with our common wealth.

As political power has shifted from progressive elected officials to CWCs, funding for the common wealth was reduced significantly by substantial tax cuts for the plutocrats. The result has been a slow drift toward “you’re on your own” society where most citizens suffer more abuse and find it more and more difficult to get ahead. Increasing taxes on the mega rich is the only way to defund the rising plutocracy and re-fund the common wealth This in turn will provide for the protection and empowerment of all citizens to create their own wealth based on their abilities, better K-12 basic education, equal access to higher education, protecting our common resources like land, air and water, an infrastructure that enables equal, and safe access to the nations common wealth.

In summary, America’s common wealth has been hit by a triple whammy: tax cuts for the rich far larger that can be considered fair, tax refunds to the rich via privateering, and by a shift of household income into the excessively reduced upper tax brackets. In addition, accountability for the nation’s common wealth has been transferred from our elected representatives and handed over to rich individuals mostly accountable to themselves and corporate CEOs who are only accountable to shareholders. The ultimate effect of all this transfer of income and accountability is that our government is less able to protect and empower its citizens.

It’s time we all realize that privateering and tax cuts favoring the very wealthy are not what America needs. Just look at where they have gotten us – The Great Recession, a growing plutocracy, consumer debt at 100 percent of GDP, banks too big to fail, and ultimately the deaths of fellow citizens.

Before deciding what freedom is worth to us in this time of financial catastrophe and preemptive war, let’s take a look at what freedom was worth to another generation of Americans.

The table below shows the U.S. tax rates and brackets for the final two years of WWII. They were only slightly less during the previous two years.

It also shows preserving freedom costs every citizen with earned income and, more importantly, the more they earned, the more they paid for preserving that freedom.

A couple of important aspects of the table above is the number of tax brackets and the maximum tax rate. There are six times as many brackets as we have today and the maximum tax rate was 2.7 times higher in 1945 than the highest rate for 2005.

Note that the above tax brackets are in 1944 dollars. To make this a little more relevant, here is the same table updated to 2005 dollars. For additional relevance, the 2005 tax brackets have been merged into the table. (The year 2005 is used to coincide with the 2005 household income information that is referenced later in this posting.)

The table below compares the 1945 and 2005 tax rates from the above table. The third column shows the reduction in the tax rate. As you can see, the reduction is not uniform and grows as income increases. These non-uniform reductions are highlighted in the last column by comparing all tax rate reductions in column three to the lowest reduction of four percent. The highest reduction is almost fourteen times greater than the lowest.

The table below groups and averages the information from the above table. There are three breakpoints based on the number of households above and below that point.

As you can see from the RICHER GAIN row, the RICHER have gotten, on average, three times greater tax breaks than the POORER, regardless of the breakpoint chosen. At the $105,000 breakpoint, 16 percent of the richest households got 361 percent bigger tax breaks than the other 84 percent of households.

A fourth breakpoint at $63K shows that 37 percent of the RICHER households got a 342 percent bigger tax break than the POORER households.

In my previous posting, I used systemic causation to show that paying taxes contributes to the success of all citizens by trying to provide a basic foundation from which we could all grow. I also stated in the article that, “Cutting taxes, especially for the rich, only increases the chances of success for the rich … while it reduces the chances of success for the rest of America’s citizenry ….”

What the tables above show is that the funds for creating our common good infrastructure have been cut drastically over the last 60 years. That means not only are our chances for success significantly reduced, but so is our ability to maintain our freedom.

Freedom from harm requires our protection. Freedom to grow and succeed requires our empowerment. Protection and empowerment require our government (Freedom cannot be subjugated to free enterprise profits.) and sufficient tax revenue.

• Disproportionate tax breaks for the rich means fewer funds for citizen protection: fewer police, fewer firemen, fewer EMTs, fewer civil service workers to keep an eye on profit-before-morals enterprises, roads and public utilities that can’t be upgraded, a public education system that only works for the rich, fewer air traffic controllers to watch the skies, less funding for scientific research that leads to new employment opportunities, a broken banking system that can’t fund new opportunities, less funding for responding to epidemics and large natural disasters, loss of civil liberties, etc.
• Disproportionate tax breaks for the rich also means fewer funds for citizen empowerment: less funding for proper and free elections, less capable public education for more and more citizens, unbuilt and unmaintained roads for mobility, failing communications and internet services needed for information, brown outs and black outs that reduce business and employment, dwindling water supplies, closed libraries, shorter hours for public services, less stable banking and securities systems, a less fair labor market, etc.

So, taxes improve the possibility of citizen success by allowing our government to protect (freedom from harm) and to empower (freedom to grow) us.

What are we willing to pay for freedom? How about our fair share of citizenship dues – taxes not unlike those of WWII? I suggest we raise the 33 percent tax rate to 35, let the 35 return to 39.6 percent, and add several more brackets for those making more than $500,000.

In my previous posting, I provided a list of critical factors that compare the conservative and progressive worldviews. One of the key progressive principles mentioned several times in that posting was common wealth for the common good. As noted in that article, this principle was also mentioned in President Obama’s inaugural speech.

Unfortunately, this principle is totally absent from the strict-father, you’re-on-your-own, conservative-without-conscience, profit-first worldview because it requires empathy and responsibility to act on that empathy. This principle is also not broadly understood any more and is only documented in a few places on the internet like The Rockridge Institute. However, common wealth is critical to our democracy and here is why.

Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin were all concerned about the accumulation of great wealth and the disparities between wealth and poverty they observed in Europe. They attributed these inequities to the European “aristocratic system of land transfers, hereditary political power, and monopoly.” Rather than concentrating wealth in a very few, our founding fathers saw common wealth as necessary for creating equality of opportunity for creating self wealth.

In the following excerpt from Wealth And Our Commonwealth, William H. Gates (father of Microsoft founder Bill Gates) and Chuck Collins, an expert on U.S. economic inequality, document our founding father’s fear of aristocracy and their ideas on taxation for creating the common wealth for the common good. This excerpt was originally posted at TomPaine.com.

The essence of the American experiment is our collective rejection of European hereditary aristocracy and grotesque inequalities of wealth. When Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, he noted that equality of condition permeated the American spirit: “The American experiment presupposes a rejection of inherited privilege.” In the words of novelist John Dos Passos, “rejection of Europe is what America is all about.”

The nation’s founders and populace viewed excessive concentrations of wealth as incompatible with the ideals of the new nation. Revolutionary era visitors to Europe, including Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John Adams, and Ben Franklin, were aghast at the wide disparities of wealth and poverty they observed. They surmised that these great European inequalities were the result of an aristocratic system of land transfers, hereditary political power, and monopoly.

Monarchies and hereditary aristocracies mocked the republican principle of self-government. Writing in Common Sense, Thomas Paine attacked the notion of hereditary government: “To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession; and as the first is a degradation and lessening of ourselves, so the second, claimed as a matter of right, is an insult and imposition on posterity.”

In two other articles, “Rights of Man” and “Agrarian justice,” Paine extended his contempt of inherited political power to a critique of inherited economic power. Paine proposed an inheritance tax that would fund an early version of Social Security.

The distrust of concentrated wealth was so great that, in an extreme sentiment, Ben Franklin argued “that no man ought to own more property than needed for his livelihood; the rest, by right, belonged to the state.” One could not accumulate vast wealth, in the republican worldview, simply through one’s own labors. In small-scale agrarian freeholder society, where land ownership was more widely distributed among men of European ancestry, there was a “natural distribution of wealth.” Farmers, artisans, and other workers reaped the “fruits of their own labor.”

In 1776, artisans from Philadelphia put forward a provision for inclusion in the original state constitution of Pennsylvania. They advocated for a limit on the concentration of wealth. “An enormous Proportion of Property vested in a few Individuals is dangerous to the Rights, and destructive of the Common Happiness of Mankind; and therefore any free State hath a Right by its Laws to discourage the Possession of such Property.”

The provision was narrowly rejected. But the concern about inequality and accumulated wealth was present at the formation of our nation.

Indeed, central to American republicanism was the principle of a broad and fair distribution of wealth and property. Noah Webster, writing in favor of adopting the U.S. Constitution in 1787, expressed that “a general and tolerably equal distribution of landed property is the whole basis of national freedom” and wide spread distribution of property was “the very soul of a republic.” Too much inequality was a threat to a self-governing society. Without an equitable land distribution, the founders believed, the republic would not survive.

John Adams also viewed broad land ownership as a key ingredient in maintaining a balance of political power. He was greatly influenced by seventeenth-century philosopher James Harrington, who argued that the widespread distribution of property dispersed power. Adams believed that when “economic power became concentrated in a few hands, then political power flowed to those possessors and away from the citizens, ultimately resulting in an oligarchy or tyranny.” In a 1776 letter to James Sullivan, Adams articulated his perspective that a balance in property owner ship was essential to liberty.

“The balance of power in a society, accompanies the balance of property in land. The only possible way, then, of preserving the balance of power on the side of equal liberty and public virtue, is to make the acquisition of land easy to every member of society; to make a division of land into small quantities, so that the multitude may he possessed of landed estates. If the multitude is possessed of the balance of real estate, the multitude will take care of the liberty, virtue, and interest of the multitude, in all acts of government.”

Thomas Jefferson, writing to James Madison in 1785 made the now famous statement that “the small land holders are the most precious part of a state.” He argued that legislators could not invent too many devices for subdividing property, “only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind.”

In the republican worldview, European aristocrats created unbalanced distributions of wealth by controlling the land through inheritance, laws of primogeniture and entail. These land tenure systems allowed land transfers only to oldest male children, maintaining hereditary concentrations of land rather than broadly distributing it. In a conscious rejection of primogeniture, Jefferson wrote:

“The descent of property of every kind therefore to all children, or to all the brothers and sisters, or other relations in equal degree, is a politic measure and a practicable one. Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.”

The revolutionaries believed in equitability, a notion of relative equality and fairness, rather than rigid equality. Revolutionary writers and orators underscored that American society would have modest inequalities. “The utopian schemes of leveling, and a community of goods,” wrote Sam Adams, “are as visionary and impracticable, as those which vest all property in the Crown.” Rigid equality, according to Sam Adams, would be “arbitrary, despotic, and in our government unconstitutional.” Minor inequalities would exist as the result of differences in individual talent, effort, and modest variations in property ownership.

This equitability translated into a culture that was antiaristocratic in sentiment. To be labeled an aristocrat or to be accused of advocating for “aristocratic policies” was the ultimate political slander in revolutionary America. For instance, John Adams through much of his later years had to fight the whispers that he had “monarchist sympathies,” having spent so many years consorting with royalty in France and England.

The founders celebrated the exceptionalism of the American experiment and heartily rejected aristocratic politics and economic policy. “The economic agenda for a republic became clear,” writes James Huston. “Enact the opposite of aristocratic legislation.”

What made the new nation unique was its relative equality. Noah Webster exuded confidence in the justness of the American system: “Here the equalizing genius of the laws distributes property to every citizen.” In other words, no rent to an absentee landlord or land ownership monopolies.

In their enthusiasm, the revolutionaries glossed over some of the enormous inequalities that existed in colonial society, the most obvious of which was the existence of slavery. “American society was not egalitarian and some individuals possessed impressive amounts of wealth,” writes Huston. “An elite did exist, and much of its property had come from political favoritism, inheritance, or family connections.” At the same time, their prescriptions for addressing this inequality were overly simplistic. For instance, the founders thought that eliminating the aristocratic land laws of entails and primogeniture would institutionalize relative equality. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson wrote confidently that America’s land tenure system encouraged subdivision and a broader distribution of land ownership, preventing aristocratic concentrations of ownership. Our nation’s founders were blind to some of the inequalities in their midst. But our national creed — with its aspiration to greater equality and suspicion of accumulated wealth and power — was forged at the time of our nation’s independence.

This “suspicion of accumulated wealth and power” was a significant cause for our revolution against Great Britain. The majority of our earliest citizens rejected aristocracy in favor of democracy and wanted taxation to limit the accumulation of wealth. However, this limitation must be turned to the common good of the new nation by equality of opportunity.

Now, over two hundred and thirty years later, we are in the midst of another struggle over the concentration of excessive wealth and power. This struggle has evolved slowly by reducing the funding of our common wealth for the common good. It started in 1963 when our top personal tax rate of 91 percent, which had existed since the end of World War II, was reduced to 70 percent. In 1982 the top rate was dropped another 20 points to 50 percent. Since 1987, the top tax rate has varied between 39.6 and 28 percent.

Since 1963, we have been creating a new conservative-without-conscience (CWC) aristocracy which, as our forefathers feared, is a threat to our democracy. We have been conned into letting this happen by the CWCs who have been telling us for years that taxes are not good; government will not make proper use of it; only the free market works in the best interest of the nation’s citizens; if you are disciplined, it’s OK to be extremely rich; and there are those among us who do not deserve a helping hand because they are not moral.

This growing aristocracy is using their excessive wealth and power to pay tens of thousands of lobbyists to get their taxes reduced and their powers increased further. Looking back at our early history, I suggest that today’s CWCs represent the new American Empire. They are at least leftover “Loyalists” from our revolution for independence.

As the CWCs have grown their aristocracy, our infrastructure, our government and the rest of us have suffered. Our bridges and highways are decaying. Our schools are failing our children and only the very rich get a good education. Our air and water are poisoned. Our national resources are being pillaged for profit. Our right to vote is under threat to help keep the CWC minority in control. Our heath care is failing to care for all but the very rich CWCs and our climate may turn on us all like never before while the CWCs speed around in their luxury SUVs.

What all this means is that we are transferring the funding of our nation’s common wealth back to the Paris Hiltons, Rupert Murdochs and other powerful CWCs of the world through one tax reduction after another. Yes, you might get something back to help pay your bills that are piling up, but the CWCs get much much more and will buy another yacht or congressman with their spare change. The rest of the nation, on the other hand, struggles to get their kids a good education, find affordable transportation to get to work, keep themselves and their children healthy and wonder if their future is doomed to climatic cataclysm. In the mean while, the mega-rich continue to shop extravagantly, collect unreasonable bonuses and take corporate welfare while avoiding proportionately replenishing our common wealth through progressively higher taxation.

Common wealth is not what CWCs believe in. CWCs are moral by virtue of their disciplined nature and are thus more deserving of wealth and power than other citizens. Their individualistic, self disciplined, moralistic, authoritarian, direct-causation worldview means all the money they earn is theirs. They earned it all by themselves.

CWCs don’t recognize that the nations’ infrastructure helped create their wealth. Since it didn’t help them, there is no need for them to pay to maintain it. Thus, they believe that taxes to fund the common wealth are wrong regardless of its contribution to their self wealth.

In addition to our vanishing common wealth, our democratic government is disappearing courtesy of the CWC aristocracy. In the CWC worldview, the Government interferes with creating wealth and steals self wealth just to give it to undisciplined immoral slackers (Remember, direct causation blinds the CWCs to the intermediate common wealth that is managed by the democratic government to promote equal opportunity for all). So, to minimize government, stop funding it. Specifically, stop taxing the CWCs that gain the most from the infrastructure which was built from our common wealth. In addition, redirect what common wealth is left to privatize government functions and help maximize the CWC aristocracy.

Privatization is fine as long as the government responsibility to protect and empower is not part of the deal. Privatizing means there is no accountability to the voters and profit takes precedence over protecting and empowering citizens. Our democratic government is responsible for protecting and empowering its citizens. The free market is responsible for making profit and profit will trump protecting and empowering citizens every time.

Our democratic government must protect and empower all of us. Protection includes the police, firefighters, emergency services, public health, the military, and so on. Empowerment includes the infrastructure needed for business and everyday life: roads, communications systems, water supplies, public education, the banking system for loans and economic stability, the SEC for the stock market, the courts for enforcing contracts, air traffic control, support for basic science, our national parks and public buildings, and more.

Building the new CWC aristocracy is wrong. It robs us of our common wealth, redirects our protection toward war and away from civil rights, prevents building and maintaining our nation’s infrastructure and eliminates equal opportunity.

Many of us believe, like our American revolutionary heroes mentioned at the beginning of this post, that we need to be responsible for ourselves and others and do what is necessary to keep and continually improve our democracy. Our innate empathy tells us that as parents we must protect and empower our children and, likewise, our government must protect and empower its’ citizens. To do that, we must proportionally fund the nation’s common wealth for the sake of the nation’s common good.

The progressive worldview closely matches our Founding Fathers. Progressives support Paine’s inheritance tax and Jefferson’s progressive tax. We must fund the common wealth for the common good. We must fund the common wealth so the government can protect and empower we the people. We must fund the common wealth to promote equality of opportunity for creating self wealth which will replenish the common wealth. We must fund the common wealth to promote our American democracy and inhibit the new CWC aristocracy.

The CWC worldview is wrong. We can’t have a government to protect and empower us (infrastructure) while we let the very rich become the mega rich. Eventually, most of us will pay a very high price.

The Greatest Generation paid for World War II with income tax rates as high as 94 percent. All we were asked to do for Bush’s war was shop.

It’s time we pay our own way. It’s time to stop asking others (China, Japan, etc.) to pay our bills. It’s time for the very rich and corporations to contribute much more to our common wealth so they don’t succeed in turning our democracy into an aristocracy.

I close with a quote from another great American, an American that was not an aristocrat, Abraham Lincoln.

“This is essentially a people’s contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men — to lift artificial weights from their shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start, and a fair chance in the race of life. Yielding to partial and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the leading object of the government for whose existence we contend.” – Abraham Lincoln Address to Congress (4 July 1861)

If I made a major decision that I later came to regret because it is costing me much more than I can manage while still living my life of ‘luxury,’ what options do I have. Should I ask strangers to make up the difference so I can continue my comfortable lifestyle? Or should I take a look at my situation, my rationale for the bad decision, my way of life, my other resources, and then take responsibility and make some adjustments?

Most of us would probably take responsibility and work to figure out our own solution. More than that, most of us would probably not have made such a bad decision in the first place. Most of us would have considered the long term risks and decided not to jeopardized the future of our family.

On the other hand, the Bush Administration that hasn’t done as we would have done. Instead, they have made multiple bad decisions (invading Iraq, ignoring New Orleans after Katrina, tax cuts for the rich, unregulated subprime loans, etc.) and are asking other countries (China and Japan) and future generations to pay for their mistakes. Not only have they performed poorly as our leaders, they have actually made themselves, and their rich supporters, richer and more powerful (unitary president, over compensated CEOs, unchecked Blackwater Inc., suspension of habeas corpus, etc.) in the process.

The administration, their small group of avid followers and friendly media moguls actually don’t mind having China and others pay for their expensive mistakes as long as they are getting richer in the process. These rich and powerful know as long as China is willing to loan the US much of what it needs, they can continue to enjoy their 2006 tax cuts. Isn’t it time to take away their tax cuts and make them pay for their mistakes?

If you’re not quite convinced, maybe a little historical perspective on income taxes would help. Take a look at US individual federal income taxes in effect during WWII in the tables below. The rich of the time were taxed at up to 94% of their income over $200,000 in 1945. After inflation, these 1945 dollars become $2,090,800 in 2005 dollars.

If The Greatest Generation supported WWII with higher taxes, shouldn’t those who support the Iraq occupation pay with higher taxes?

(Cross posted at OOIBC.)

In a previous article based on a 1996 study by Pew Research, I stated, “In conclusion, the white evangelical Protestants get little return from the party they support. Money may not be what they are looking for, but mixing religion and politics isn’t the answer either.”

Well, Pew Research has released updated data for 2006 and white evangelical Protestants are getting poorer and getting less from the 2006 tax cut.

The table below combines data from the two studies and compares income ranges for white mainline Protestants and white evangelical Protestants. The second and third columns combine the actual population distribution percentages from both Pew Research Studies by income range. The fourth and fifth columns show the changes in population distribution over the past ten years by income range.

These two columns also show how the two population groups have migrated up or down the income ranges. While more mainline Protestants have moved up the income scale, white evangelical Protestants have not kept up.

On average, evangelicals have fallen behind mainline Protestants in income by another 21 percent over the last ten years and, as a result, get less from the 2006 tax cut as indicated by the last column of the table. As the mainline Protestants move up the income scale, they get more of the tax reduction. As the evangelical Protestants slide further behind in income, they get less.

Which party passed the tax cut? Which party do the evangelical Protestants continue to support as they fall farther behind and benefit less? Why?

Family Income	White Mainline Protestant % (1996/ 2006)	White Evangelical Protestant % (1996/ 2006)	1996 to 2006 Change % (Main)	1996 to 2006 Change % (Evan)	Average Tax Reduction from 2006 Tax Cuts
$0 – $20,000	19/12.9	22/19.2	-37.4	-12.7	$2
$20,000 – $29,999	18/8.5	18/12.4	-52.8	-31.1	$10
$30,000 – $49,999	27/22.0	28/25.7	-18.5	-8.2	$32
$50,000 – $74,999	13/18.6	12/14.1	+43.1	+17.5	$112
$75,000 +	12/30.6	8/18.6	+155	+133	$10,950

On March 17, 2006, “The Decider” (President Bush II) signed a $70,000,000,000 (billion) tax cut passed by “The Follower” (Congress), which is trying to find another $23 billion for us – well some of us anyway.

The table below, which is based on a recent Tax Policy Center (TPC) review of the new tax cuts, shows how this tax cut is distributed by “income class.”

The green shaded area represents the 14 percent of the tax payers who earn over $100,000 a year and get 87 percent of this cut. In real numbers this means 20,197,000 “tax units” will get about $61 billion. This works out to a little over $3,000 per tax unit.

As represented by the blue shaded area, the remaining $9 billion from this tax cut goes to 125,641,000 less rich “tax units.” That works out to about $72 per tax unit, about enough to fill an average car’s gas tank 1.5 times.

Cash Income Class (1,000 of 2005 $s)	Share of Tot Tax Change (%)	Avg Tax Reduction ($)	Tax Units (1,000)	Tax Units (%)
Less than 10	0.0	0	18,886	12.9
10-20	0.1	3	25,413	17.4
20-30	0.3	10	20,374	13.9
30-40	0.4	17	15,429	10.4
40-50	0.9	47	11,953	8.2
50-75	3.6	112	21,121	14.4
75-100	7.6	406	12,455	8.5
100-200	32.0	1,395	15,196	10.4
200-500	27.2	4,527	3,988	2.7
500-1000	5.7	5,656	668	0.5
>1000	22.3	42,766	345	0.2
All	100	453	146,417	100

Now here is a question on the tax cuts. Since, the Christianists are, by definition, a power player in the political process, to what extent were they affected by this tax cut? Since they support the GOP, they should benefit by their support. Right?

The answer can be found in a 1996 study from Pew Research on religion and politics. This study was a follow-up to another survey from 1987, and potentially, the 1996 study will be updated in the near future.

First of all, let me repeat Andrew Sullivan’s description of a Christianist, “I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.”

Now here are some of the general findings of the 1996 survey that relate to this Christianist description:

• Grown their affiliation with the Republican Party from 35 to 42 percent
• Grown their representation among voters from 19 to 24 percent
• Greater opposition to:
  • abortion,
  • gay marriage,
  • gun control,
  • sending troops go Bosnia, [Remember, this was in 1996]
  • disseminating birth control information to teenagers, and
  • women in the work force

The survey also reported these additional facts on mixing religion and politics for Christianists or the broader category of white evangelical Protestants:

• Twenty percent of white evangelical Protestants reported hearing partisan politics from the pulpit as compared to 12 percent for both mainline Protestants and Catholics.
• Eighteen percent of white evangelical Protestants reported campaign information was made available in their churches compared to 5 percent for mainline Protestants or Catholics.
• White evangelical Protestants think it is okay for churches to be involved in politics by a three to one margin.
• Fifty-eight percent reported being displeased with the media (Note: Fox News went live in 1996 when these survey results were published.).
• The Christian Coalition gets a favorable, 64 percent, rating from white evangelical Protestants.
• White evangelical Protestants surpassed their political opposite, Progressive Catholics, in terms of consistency across a broad range of political issues.
• White evangelical Protestants favor the GOP by 56 percent over the Democrats as the party most concerned about protecting religious values.

Now getting back to the tax cut. Here are some of the raw data from the 1996 survey showing Protestant education and income, which we can relate to the tax cut study above:

Education	White Mainline Protestant	White Evangelical Protestant
College Grad	27	16
Some College	22	24
HS Grad	41	47
< HS Grad	10	14

 

Family Income	White Mainline Protestant	White Evangelical Protestant
$0 – $20,000	19	22
$20,000 – $29,999	18	18
$30,000 – $49,999	27	28
$50,000 – $74,999	13	12
$75,000 +	12	8

Note from Pew Research: Some columns do not add to 100% because not all categories are shown.

From these tables, you can see that white evangelical Protestants average below mainline Protestants on the high end of income and education. They also surpass mainline Protestants on the low end of both scales. In other words, white evangelical Protestants are more likely to get less of the tax cut. (And why do they support the GOP?)

This tax benefit is highlighted in the table below where the tax reduction distribution from the TPC is appended to the raw income data from the 1996 Pew Research survey. Since the TPC table has 11 income groups and Pew Research and only 5 groups, the TPC tax reductions had to be averaged to come up with the numbers in the table below. For example, TPC’s 30 to 40 and 40 to 50 numbers (17 and 47) average to 32 in the table below for the 30,000 to 49,999 range.

Family Income	White Mainline Protestant	White Evangelical Protestant	Average Tax Reduction
$0 – $20,000	19	22	$2
$20,000 – $29,999	18	18	$10
$30,000 – $49,999	27	28	$32
$50,000 – $74,999	13	12	$112
$75,000 +	12	8	$10,950

In conclusion, the white evangelical Protestants get little return from the party they support. Money may not be what they are looking for, but mixing religion and politics isn’t the answer either.

One other comment. In my previous article, I made references to the dependent masses, not the majority of citizens in a country, but the group that is necessary to bring about and maintain a single party state. Are the white evangelical Protestants the masses for some future single party state?

In my research for this article, I also came across another interesting chart. It is from a December 2002 survey and shows that 60 percent of the U.S. population feels that religion is very important to them. It also shows that the US is a considerable exception to the rule that says, the poorer the nation – the more important religion is.

Click on image for the original report.