Three professors (Robert Hockett of Cornell Law School, Daniel Markovits of Yale Law School, and Jacob Hacker a Yale political scientist) created the website GiveItBackForJobs.org. The premise is that the responsible wealthy would donate their windfall from the Bush tax cuts and the Obama extensions to the charities of their choice and thus stimulating the economy. Anyone using the website for that purpose should be commended. However, the institution of a website of this type is tantamount to using aspirin to attenuate the pain of a broken fibula.
I continuously articulate the need for peaceful class warfare in America. In so doing I am invariably attacked as being a Socialist, a Marxist, or a Communist. What many fail to realize is that in 1981 President Reagan declared war on the middle class with his policies. He never called it class warfare, but it was. Unfortunately President Bush(I), who accurately referred to Reagans policies as voodoo economics, as well as President Clinton continued these policies however more responsibly. George W Bush continued them on steroids.
The only gauge we have to measure societal progress is via income, wealth, and quality of life distribution over time. What has occurred post-Reagan full embrace of supply side economics is quantifiable and documented. The result has been a tax structure that allows for wealth accumulation by the top two percent. The result has been a regulatory climate that inhibits the individual from innovating as corporations have garnered more rights implicitly than that of the individual. The result has been a lowering of the quality of life as more in the family unit has had to work more hours simply to keep the same standard of living which affects the well-being of the family unit.
Having the wealthy decide on the redistribution of their government induced wealth windfall through charitable contributions is hardly good fiscal policy. Only a substantial increase in taxes on the wealthy will begin to mitigate the fiscal disaster we are in. While many will construe this as a “soak the rich” policy, this could not be further from the truth.
Many have been brainwashed into believing that the modest entitlements presented by Social Security, Medicare, and other programs are where the majority of our fiscal irresponsibility lies. I beg to differ. The reason to have a humane society is to “provide for the general welfare” of its citizens.
While many in the wealthy class has worked harder than most to attain that wealth, success is not earned in a vacuum. The success of the wealthy is dependent on a viable middle class to earn their wealth. Our current policies that allow corporations (mostly owned by the wealthy) to outsource manufacturing and labor are decimating the middle class. While the wealthy reaps the profits of overseas slave labor to satisfy the middle classes’ need for products and services, they do not reinvest in the middle class jobs or in a sufficient level of taxes to mitigate the support of the government that keeps them viable. Moreover, the wealthy extract yet another premium from low taxation by loaning the government the funds for deficit spending through bonds that the middle class ultimately pays back with interest to the wealthy; an obscene form of wealth transfer from the middle class to the wealthy.
Until the middle class takes responsibility to understand the immovable obstacles that inhibits the success of most by design, more will continue over the cliff of indentured servitude. One can only hope that sanity and clear thinking will eventually overcome the very effective Right Wing Echo chamber of talk radio and TV. It is the only hope the middle class has.
My Book: As I See It: Class Warfare The Only Resort To Right Wing Doom
Book’s Webpage: http://amzn.to/dt72c7 – Twitter: http://twitter.com/egbertowillies
‘Give It Back For Jobs’ Helps Affluent Return Tax Cuts amy.lee@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting
For affluent Americans outraged by the fiscal and social consequences of tax cuts handed to them by President George W. Bush and recently extended for two more years, a trio of similarly dismayed academics has furnished a way for them to put their money where their mouth is.
Their new website, giveitbackforjobs.org, invites high-income Americans to calculate the value of their tax cut under the extension and then pledge to donate that money directly to charities that the site says encourage "fairness, economic growth, and a vibrant middle class." The site doesn’t accept contributions directly, but links users to those charities.
The site has been engineered to offer Americans who view the tax cuts as misguided a means to personally direct dollars toward countering the effects, while also registering a protest for broad policies that have exacerbated economic inequality.
"It’s like civil disobedience," said Daniel Markovits, a professor at Yale Law School, and one of the three academics behind the initiative. "You’re not committing a crime, but the government says, ‘This is what you should give,’ and you’re saying, ‘No, I should give more.’"
President Obama took office last year on a pledge to end the tax cuts lavished by his predecessor on the wealthiest American households. But he agreed to continue the cuts via a controversial compromise with Republicans in Congress in which he gained an extension of emergency unemployment benefits, while also securing the renewal of lowered taxes for middle-class households.
The deal landed as a bitter disappointment to liberal economists, who have assailed it for perpetuating the conditions that have led millions of ordinary Americans to take on impossible debts in recent years to finance housing, health care and education while their wages have stagnated. The tax cuts accelerated a long-term flow of increased shares of national wealth to the most affluent households, leaving smaller and smaller slices for everyone else
Give It Back For Jobs aims to narrow the gap by effectively mimicking the tax policy that would have been in place had the Bush tax cuts been allowed to expire. Had the tax cuts gone off the books, more dollars would have flowed into federal co
ffers, making more money available to pursue job-creating public works projects and aid to now ailing states and local communities. The new website seeks to compensate for those lost tax revenues by inviting wealthy Americans to voluntarily contribute equivalent funds to social service groups that are focused on aiding people contending with the weak economy.
