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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Let’s bring the one percent back home to America

Nancy Jo Tubbs
Posted 7/18/12

Recently millionaires and successful corporations have become the ugly Americans on the battlefield of class warfare. They’re considered the one percent, the folks some of us want to wring more tax …

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Let’s bring the one percent back home to America

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Recently millionaires and successful corporations have become the ugly Americans on the battlefield of class warfare. They’re considered the one percent, the folks some of us want to wring more tax money from, and who are resisting giving it up. And isn’t that what war is so often about—wealth, land, resources and profit. One side has it and the other side wants a share of it.

President Obama has said that Congress should extend the Bush tax cuts for a year for those making less than $250,000, in order to make taxes more fair. When the tax cuts expire at the end of the year, the Obama plan would let taxes rise on income over $250,000, with the resulting revenues of an additional $65 billion going to fund the budget and pay down the national deficit. The increase would hike the top marginal tax rates for about 1.25 million tax filers from today’s 33 and 35 percent to 36 and 39.6 percent.

Ironically, this proposal was making headlines at the same time that Mitt Romney campaign donors were driving their Mercedes-Benzes and Bentleys to multi-million dollar estates in the Hamptons, paying $25,000 to hear the candidate speak and $50,000 for entrance to the party at the David Koch mansion. The contrast between the haves and the have-less crowds could not have been more apparent.

Yet, some of us have millionaires as acquaintances or know them as community members or work for them as employees. We may not live next door to the mansion, but we have a cabin down the lake. Some of these folks are seen on the financial sections of the daily newspaper. They are the corporate executives making a $300 million deal and the heads of banks, big oil and big pharma companies seeking their heftiest profits yet. We may know that guy or gal as someone who cares about the local community and donates to the food bank or maybe to the Community Foundation or the Bear Center.

It’s clear that some of these folks care about the city or town where they live or vacation. The problem as I see it is that a couple of generations ago the broader population of millionaires and their corporations had an interest in the success, not only of their own corporations and communities, but in the broader society and they worked to create wealth that benefitted America and Americans.

Today’s corporate ethic is largely tuned to creating wealth only for shareholders. Jobs are shipped overseas, unions are busted and workforces are downsized while some CEOs receive exorbitant pay and bonuses and lobby to remove government regulations on worker safety and financial risk-taking.

One wonders, with a national unemployment rate of 8.2 percent and a lackluster job growth of only about 80,000 jobs in June, if a country can recover its financial footing with so many people out of work who are unable to purchase the goods and services that keep the economy moving.

Republicans assert that a tax increase on income above $250,000 will slow job growth and set back our economic recovery. But if this were the case, shouldn’t the Bush tax break have already sped the American economy into a more significant recovery? Where is the proof that lower taxes on millionaires is good for job growth?

The president recently pointed to obstructionism by Congressional Republicans to portions of the American Jobs Act as a major block to our economic recovery. Among its provisions, it would help states hire the teachers, police and fire personnel whose jobs have been cut during the recession. It would help responsible homeowners refinance their home mortgages and save up to $3,000 a year.

It would invest in infrastructure projects and give tax breaks to small businesses that hire more workers and increase wages. It would remove tax breaks from companies that ship jobs overseas and give breaks to companies that return jobs to American shores.

Those are provisions that will influence millionaires and their corporations to begin working for America again. Clearly the Bush tax cuts for the top two percent are not working to create jobs, but these provisions of the American Jobs Act will grow the economy.

We need Americans of all economic levels to get behind these proposals now. It’s not too late for the one percent to rejoin the larger society they’ve spurned and make us one nation—a more successful society of the 100 percent.