{"id":2709,"date":"2012-02-02T00:43:59","date_gmt":"2012-02-02T00:43:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithforward\/?p=2709"},"modified":"2012-02-02T00:45:56","modified_gmt":"2012-02-02T00:45:56","slug":"shared-sacrifice-shared-reward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithforward\/2012\/02\/shared-sacrifice-shared-reward\/","title":{"rendered":"Shared Sacrifice, Shared Reward"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u201cEvery one to whom much is given, of him will much be required; and of him to whom men commit much they will demand the more.<\/em>\u201d (Jesus, Sermon on the Mount, Luke 12: 48)<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how it is in the kingdom of heaven, that realm of living imagination that inspires us to create it on earth.<\/p>\n

But here on earth in America today, Mitt Romney, a very rich man, paid an average of only 14% in tax on his income over the last two years.<\/p>\n

Low income Americans paid 15% on taxable earnings over $8,500 to $34,500.<\/p>\n

Since 2003, Romney\u2019s investments, which produce most of his income, have been in a \u201cblind trust\u201d.\u00a0 He\u2019s not even making investment decisions.\u00a0 Can it be said that Mitt Romney \u201cearns\u201d any money at all?\u00a0 And if he\u2019s not really earning money through his own hard work and wits, how could taxing his income at a much higher rate have any impact on his level of ambition in the free-market economy?\u00a0 (See more on this subject in a recent \u201cmusing\u201d of mine, The Burklo Limit<\/a>.)\u00a0 Less money in his pocket might dull his political ambitions and campaign expenditures slightly.\u00a0 But would that be an all-bad thing?<\/p>\n

America has abandoned much of the principle of progressive taxation, in which the impact of taxes on people\u2019s lives is factored proportionally into the rates that people pay.\u00a0 Under progressive taxation, lower income people would pay a lower rate, and progressively higher income people would pay progressively higher rates \u2013 thus somewhat flattening the felt impact of taxation among economic classes.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of noise in politics these days about instituting a \u201cflat tax\u201d \u2013 one rate for everybody, regardless of income level.\u00a0 But nothing\u2019s flat about the effect that a uniform tax rate at Mitt Romney\u2019s level would have on the incomes of people across the wealth spectrum.\u00a0 Lower income people might sacrifice buying higher-quality food in order to pay their 14%.\u00a0 Paying taxes has viscerally-felt consequences for them.\u00a0 But 14% is not even close to being a nutritional threat for rich folks.\u00a0 Romney still would be a very wealthy man even if he paid the current top rate, 35%, in income taxes.<\/p>\n

What is the \u201cmuch\u201d that Jesus says will be required of those who have been given much?\u00a0 It must be proportional, so that it is flat in tangible impact rather than in abstract numbers.<\/p>\n

The Republican argument for low taxes on rich people is that they are the ones who create jobs.\u00a0 \u201cWe all know that there\u2019s a reason we have low rates on capital gains. That\u2019s because it spurs new investment in our economy and allows capital to move more quickly,\u201d House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said recently<\/a>.\u00a0 But the top marginal tax rate in the Eisenhower era was 90%.\u00a0 Somehow the economy chugged ahead during that Republican administration!<\/p>\n

A researcher with the business-oriented Kauffman Foundation, quoted recently in Miller McCune Magazine<\/a>, said that only about 10% of the wealthy people of America are job-creators.\u00a0 Yes, almost all job creators are wealthy people.\u00a0 \u2018Mom and Pop\u201d small businesses don\u2019t grow the economy nearly as much as those businesses started by rich folks.\u00a0 But only a small number of wealthy people invest in the start-up businesses that create substantial numbers of new jobs.\u00a0 Why is our country rewarding with lavish tax breaks the 90% of the rich who do little or nothing to stimulate more employment of Americans?\u00a0 Higher taxes from them could pay for public investments that do preserve and create jobs and improve the infrastructure for capitalism to thrive.<\/p>\n

Winner-Take-All Politics,<\/strong> a book by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson (2010), documents that US government policy changes in the last 30 years have been the primary causes of a hyper-concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.\u00a0 A long-term, highly-organized, massively-funded political effort to cut progressive taxation on the wealthy and eliminate regulation on the financial industry has compounded the assets of the very richest of the rich.\u00a0 \u201cWhy has Washington made the rich richer and abandoned the middle class?\u00a0 Because of the relentless effectiveness of modern, efficient organizations operating in a much less modern and efficient political system.\u201d\u00a0 (p 115)\u00a0 (See Bill Moyers\u2019 recent interview with the authors of this book here<\/a>.)\u00a0 \u201cIf the effects of taxation on income at the top had been frozen in place in 1970, a very big chunk of the growing distance between the superrich and everyone else would disappear.\u201d (p 49)\u00a0 Hacker and Pierson lay most of the blame for creating much worse income inequality on the Republican Party, but also lay a large share on Democratic politicians who have become dependent on Wall Street money for their campaign funds.<\/p>\n

Mitt Romney accuses the President of stirring up class divisions in America.\u00a0 That\u2019s a breathtaking statement from someone who had an income of $42 million dollars over the past two years, money that he gained almost entirely without working.\u00a0 Americans are only now waking up to the results of a class war that has been waged against them for three decades.\u00a0 The President is just responding to the people\u2019s anger about it.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this also will be the year when Americans wake up to the consequences of three decades of systematic dismantling of the ability of government to protect them from the excesses and failures of capitalism \u2013 and to protect capitalism from its own tendency to self-destruction.\u00a0 All of us have skin in this game.\u00a0 Today, when capitalism succeeds, rich people get richer.\u00a0 When it fails, the taxes we all pay bail it out in order to prevent further economic damage.\u00a0\u00a0 As quoted by William Cohan in the NY Times:<\/a> \u201cSenator Christopher Dodd correctly said in April 2008, during the first Senate hearing about the unfolding financial crisis, \u2018We\u2019ve socialized risk and we\u2019ve privatized reward.'\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd what if the traditionalist-conservatives are right and a\u2026 tax cut, without corresponding cuts in expenditures, also leaves us with a fiscal problem?\u00a0 The neo-conservative is willing to leave those problems to be coped with by liberal interregnums.\u00a0 He wants to shape the future, and will leave it up to his opponents to tidy up afterwards,\u201d said\u00a0 Irving Kristol, neo-conservative journalist, in 1980.\u00a0 This cynical plan for destruction of the capacity of government to serve the common good has succeeded.\u00a0 Republicans bankrupted the country with tax cuts and an expensive war, leaving President Obama to clean up the mess\u2026 and then obstructed at every turn his attempts to clean up the mess.\u00a0 Conservative leaders understand how to manipulate the voters.\u00a0 If Republicans make a mess of government, that makes the people lose trust in government, and that just feeds their anti-government agenda.\u00a0 They believe voters will blame Obama for failing to save the country from the worst recession since the Great Depression more than they\u2019ll blame the Republicans for stonewalling his solutions to the problem.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time for us to prove them wrong.\u00a0 With our votes and our voices, it\u2019s time to put the heat on our politicians to return to a truly progressive income tax system to fund an efficient and effective government that serves the people and not just special interests.\u00a0 It\u2019s time to demand sensible limits on the financial industry and on campaign finance.\u00a0 These are mainstream, tried and true policies that have served our country well in the past and can do so again.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics,\u201d\u00a0 said Plutarch, the 1st century Roman historian.\u00a0 Our country may not be on its deathbed, but surely we are now experiencing the pain of a serious sickness in our democracy.\u00a0 The interests of the many have been sacrificed for the interests of .1% of the people of this country.\u00a0 And we should ask if the interests even of this tiny slice of the richest of the rich have been best served.\u00a0 Henry Ford paid his auto workers more than the prevailing wage, so they\u2019d be able to buy his cars and make him richer.\u00a0 How much more comfortable everyone would be, including the richest, if lower and middle income workers had a lot more economic security in America?\u00a0 How much easier life would be for capitalists if America had universal, single-payer health insurance!\u00a0 Their companies would not need to pay for ever-more costly private insurance for their workers.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s bailout of Wall Street, and the accompanying massive infusion of public money into the economy, was essential to prevent a bad recession from becoming a terrible depression that would have ruined most of us and severely whacked the assets of the wealthy. Let\u2019s not miss this teachable moment:\u00a0 if the government doesn\u2019t properly regulate business, you and I will pay to pick up the pieces when the market implodes.\u00a0 Preventing such debacles with a reformed economic and political system will benefit people in all economic classes.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re all in this together.\u00a0 Shared sacrifice, shared reward: this can be our mantra as the presidential election season begins in earnest.<\/p>\n

A suggestion: vote via the buddy system.\u00a0 If you are someone who stays on top of public affairs, please lose your inhibitions and email your voting choices to everyone you know \u2013 early and often!\u00a0 If you are on the other end of the spectrum, find folks you know and respect and ask them to be your buddies, getting voting advice from them.\u00a0 From the grassroots up, let\u2019s work for real change \u2013 till the kingdom comes!<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cEvery one to whom much is given, of him will much be required; and of him to whom men commit much they will demand the more.\u201d (Jesus, Sermon on the Mount, Luke 12: 48) That\u2019s how it is in the kingdom of heaven, that realm of living imagination that inspires us to create it on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nShared Sacrifice, Shared Reward<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\""Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required; and of him to whom men commit much they will demand the more." 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