Concentration Of Wealth

Republican Tax Plan Will Hurt Middle Class, Promote More Concentration Of Wealth, And Will Kill Republican Majority Whether It Passes Or Not!

Ronald 3 Comments

The Republican Party’s attempt to promote “tax reform” will fail, whether it passes or not.

The likelihood is that Republicans in New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and California will refuse to vote for it, since it ends deduction of state and local income taxes on tax forms in those states.

It is also likely that a few Republicans in the US Senate will oppose it because of other aspects of the plan that make it uncomfortable to support.

The bill would victimize the middle class, and promote greater concentration of wealth in the top one percent and the corporations.

It would harm the white working class voters who put Donald Trump in office in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

The legislation adds $1.75 trillion to the national debt, and cuts so many programs and benefits, displeasing deficit hawks because of the former, and moderates and independents due to the latter.

Charities will be harmed by the legislation, and home builders and real estate agents will be affected by limits on mortgage interest deductions, making people less willing to buy homes, and instead to rent their housing.

Corporations will gain the most from the legislation, and many Americans are angry that many corporations already pay little or no taxes.

The legislation would also hurt Obamacare in a different form, even after failure to repeal it earlier this year, and no replacement is offered for millions of Americans who benefit from it.

The end of the estate tax, which affects so few people, also will displease the average American, who does not understand why all inheritances should be untouched in any way by taxes, as wealthy people have a responsibility to pay their fair share in life, as well as at the end of life, rather than pass on tens of millions to their heirs, without any responsibility to contribute to the future of American society.

Also, medical deductions would be limited, and students who have massive loan payments would not be able to deduct any of them on their tax return, undermining the sick and the young.

One can expect that this legislation will not pass, and therefore will harm the Republican Party, but if somehow it does pass, it also will harm the Republican brand in the 2018 midterm elections!

We Can Look Forward To The Obama-Pope Francis Meeting In Late March!

Ronald 6 Comments

The announcement by the White House that President Obama will meet Pope Francis in Vatican City in late March, after attending meetings and visiting several nations in Europe earlier, is a great development!

It will allow our path breaking President, who has shown great courage in many areas of domestic and foreign policy, to meet a Pope who has shook up the Catholic Church, and affected attitudes on a multitude of issues in less than one year in the Papacy!

The two men share a concern about income inequality, the greatest concentration of wealth in the hands of a few in America and world wide, and the horrible poverty and deprivation that exists in much of the world, including one out of six Americans, many of them children, in America.

Both are concerned for human rights worldwide as well, and both understand the discrimination that has been visited against women, and gays and lesbians, and the Pope is also aware of the sexual abuse of women and children by evil elements in the Catholic Church, along with the corruption in the Vatican Bank.

Both Obama and Pope Francis have been called Marxists, and Socialists by the right wing, but they wear such appellations with pride, while laughing at the lunatics who profess such ridiculous statements about two brave men, who will be well remembered in history for their principles and values!

Back To The Gilded Age: The Gospel Of Wealth And Social Darwinism

Ronald 2 Comments

In the Gilded Age of the late 19th century in America, there were prevailing philosophies that influenced the growth of economic concentration and social conservatism and justified them.

The first was the “Gospel of Wealth”, published by steel industrialist Andrew Carnegie, that argued that America should honor and respect the great capitalists, despite the reality that the growth of monopoly capitalism was curbing small business opportunities, promoting the exploitation of working people, and providing lack of competition in pricing of products for consumers. Instead, the great capitalists should be applauded and respected for their “great” contributions to America!

Social Darwinism, based on a distortion of the ideas of Charles Darwin and Adam Smith, was a philosophy based on the writings of British writer Herbert Spencer and American sociologist William Graham Sumner, justifying the “laissez faire” viewpoint of Adam Smith on economics, and applying it to society regarding the struggle for survival and survival of the fittest of Charles Darwin in his evolutionary theory. So therefore, government should NOT intervene to give aid and support to the poor, the sick, the disadvantaged, and instead let nature take its course, as that would advance society, eliminating the weak in society through natural causes.

What Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan offer is a return to the Gospel of Wealth and Social Darwinism.

The question is whether we are ready to reverse 140 years of history and revert to the 19th century in the 21st century, and leave tens of millions of Americans behind as we surge forward on the growth of monopoly capitalism and concentration of wealth to a level not even seen in the Gilded Age!

An Absolute Outrage: Top 400 Families In America Own As Much as Bottom 60 Percent Of Entire American Population!

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In the midst of outrageous budget cuts in many state legislatures for education and health care and other essential needs of the American people, and with the suggestion of Congressman Paul Ryan of the House of Representatives Budget Committee that future taxes on the top incomes be lowered from 35 to 25 percent, while privatizing Medicare and Medicaid, we see the further acquisition of America’s wealth by the very super rich of our population!

The top 400 Families in America, including all relatives, owns as much total income as the bottom 60 percent of all Americans, about 200 million citizens!

America is more stratified in the past 30 years since the administration of Ronald Reagan changed tax policy to favor the wealthy, and surpasses the most stratified society before 1980, Great Britain!

Great Britain has always had an aristocracy based on heritage over a thousand years and more, but we have now managed to create a greater aristocracy based simply on greed, selfishness, and materialism than our former colonial masters!

Is this something to be proud of, that we claim to be a democracy with equal opportunity for all, and yet the truth is that such statements are a total fabrication, and that we have become a plutocracy controlled by a class that loves to perpetuate the myth that anyone can strike it rich, just to keep the masses happy in their dreaming of a reality that is not possible?

America is on the way to future civil war based on the masses eventually realizing that they have been lied to, and income levels will cause a reaction that the super wealthy will fear to see, if we do not have those most fortunate among us to start realizing their social, moral, and religious responsibility to pay a fair share of their income to better the lives of the rest of us, and make us what we claim to be but are not, a democracy of, by, and for the people!