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Polarizing
Plutocrats
January 22, 2003
By David Swanson
I listened to Bill Gates' Dad talk last week at a D.C. hotel
at an event put together by United for a Fair Economy. He
wanted to further limit the number of estates touched by the
estate tax and to make sure we recognized the benefits to
the country of allowing a small number of people to live in
a world of tremendous comfort unlike anything most of us ever
experience.
He also wanted to keep most of the estate tax in place, because
he opposed allowing families to eternally maintain their wealth,
and because he believed our society and our government create
the playing field and educate the workers that allow for the
accumulation of wealth.
With Republicans intent on completely eliminating the estate
tax, we should be pushing to expand and increase it even if
we believe the status quo to be ideal (I don't, I really want
the tax expanded). Politicians love the middle ground, but
the middle ground is pretty far to the right these days because
the prostitutes for the plutocrats push an extreme agenda
and the first words out of most progressive mouths are a compromise.
In fact, that's not quite the right name for it, since you
have to have an initial position before you can compromise.
Self-censorship (or deferral to a moderate quasi-celebrity)
may be a better description. Leftists have become the conservatives,
as the debate is between radical or moderate shifts to the
right.
In the latest issue of The Nation, Gates Sr. and Chuck
Collins refer to limiting the estate tax as "reform," even
while explaining that there isn't much need to limit it. In
the next sentence they cite evidence that there is in fact
ZERO need to limit it:
"Proposals to reform the tax have been blocked since 2000
by the 'all or nothing' repeal lobby, which understands the
peril of not having smaller estates as camouflage. Once exemptions
rise above $3 million, it becomes impossible to find a credible
and photogenic farmer or restaurant owner who will complain
about what opponents call the 'death tax.' It's hard enough
to find them now. The pro-repeal American Farm Bureau was
asked to produce an example of a farmer who had lost a farm
because of the estate tax. It could not identify a single
one."
The same issue of The Nation contained a much wiser
proposal by Gar Alperovitz called "Tax the Plutocrats," which
argued for significant increases in taxes on the top one or
two percent of the wealthy. "The first step is to stop compromising
at the outset," he wrote, before arguing for a tax system
that sharply differentiates between the top 2 percent and
the bottom 98 percent. Alperovitz recommended a repeal of
Bush's tax cuts at the top, a return to the 50 percent top
marginal income tax rates of the first Reagan Administration,
corporate taxes equivalent to those in force during the Nixon
Administration, and a wealth tax of at least 1 percent, in
addition to public programs to create wealth for the rest
of us, including government-funded accounts for every individual
at birth.
This sort of positive vision is exactly what's needed, though
it needs to be more aggressive if it is going to serve as
a long-term (20-year) plan. And it has a major loophole. Unless
the value of the minimum wage during the Nixon Administration
is restored and indexed to automatically keep pace with the
cost of living, and unless workers' right to organize is to
some significant extent protected, we will continue moving
toward a society in which the wages paid to a majority of
us converge on zero and the government is faced with the responsibility
both to provide families with sustenance and to do so in a
way that encourages work. If the government taxes corporations
and plutocrats only to pay their employees for them, real
gains will be limited, inequality of wealth and power will
continue to grow, workers/beggars' ability to obtain credit
and accumulate wealth will be further diminished, and a common
fund to feed the wage slaves will be substituted for common
participation in power.
Already many make a rational decision not to work for $5.15
per hour. Often child care costs more than a single parent
can earn. And various illegal activities can pay bills that
$5.15 won't. The decision not to work hurts the economy but
benefits the calculators of the fiction known as the "unemployment
rate," since people not actively searching for work are not
considered "unemployed." Opponents of living wage laws routinely
promote earned income tax credits, housing and food assistance,
and government job training programs as preferable to the
"socialist" idea of a wage standard. Median wage rates for
non-supervisory workers are declining after dropping from
the mid seventies through the mid nineties and then rebounding
slightly in the late nineties. Welfare for non-workers is
being eliminated. Second class labor rights for workfare workers
and undocumented immigrants are being established.
If we pinch some of the plutocrats' wealth but do not establish
a living wage for workers, the middle class will not benefit
and the poor are bound to become poorer still.
Gates Sr.'s position makes no sense to me. To him any accumulation
of wealth is worthy of praise as long as it occurs within
a single lifetime. But the instant that wealth is passed to
a family's next generation, it becomes intolerable. Presumably
he believes this regardless of whether a billionaire dies
at 35 or 102.
In contrast, I maintain that possessing enough money to alleviate
all the serious deprivation in one or more countries, without
suffering any pain, hardship, or humiliation oneself (and,
on the contrary, receiving awards and praises of historical
proportions), and NOT DOING SO, is shameful in the extreme.
Some years back, Ralph Nader wrote a letter to Bill Gates
Jr. suggesting this. The effect was not a rapid conversion,
and some Americans thought that Nader should have been ashamed
of suggesting such a thing. But the belief that Gates Jr.
and lesser plutocrats should fork over much of their wealth
seems to be growing, probably in response to increased hardship
and increased awareness of the dishonest and monopolistic
tactics often used to acquire great wealth.
A campaign to change our current system of wealth could mobilize
lower income Americans by demonizing the billionaires and
their hired-gun lobbyists and lawyers. Someone like Rick Berman
who takes money from fast-food chains and hotels in order
to argue against wage standards, non-smoking laws, food safety
standards, or lower blood-alcohol levels for drunk driving
laws, seems an easy target. His anti-government rhetoric suggests
he would do away with laws on child-labor, workplace safety,
or even that pesky ban on slavery, and do so in the name of
letting "the market" benefit the poor.
The reason it is helpful for progressive groups and magazines
to promote the moderate views of someone like Gates Sr. is
that it helps to muddy this image of demonic plunderers. Even
Berman must have a heart somewhere inside him. And so - dare
I say it? - must George Bush Jr. The moderate allies whom
progressives need already know this.
I marched for peace yesterday in D.C. and noticed that many
marchers were turned off by comparisons of Bush to Hitler
and other uses of demonization. Martin Luther King Jr., whose
holiday is tomorrow, urged us to aggressively pursue a positive
vision while loving our enemies and seeking reconciliation.
If King were here he would not predict the speedy conversion
of Bush into a good and compassionate president. King might
very well argue for Bush's impeachment, as Ramsey Clark did
at the peace rally. But King would insist on our recognizing
the remote possibility of persuading Bush to change.
Hatred hurts the haters and wastes our energy. We are so
focused on fighting Bush that we are distracted from proposing
a vision of our own. We are miserable about it, and that misery
does not attract allies, just as the hatred itself discourages
allies. Strangely, finding kindness in our hearts and respect
or agape for George W. Bush may be part of a strategy that
will allow us to oppose Bush's policies more fervently. This
seeming contradiction made sense 40 years ago when King so
eloquently explained it to us time and time again. Now is
not the time to forget it.
We must build a powerful majority movement not through compromise
but through love, respectful persuasion, and a passion for
justice as we conceive it, not matter how radical the changes
required to get us there.
David Swanson's website is www.davidswanson.org.
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