How Rich Old White Men Are Taking the Lunch Money Away From Broken-Down Schools
Published on Monday, September 22, 2014
by Common Dreams
How Rich Old White Men Are Taking the Lunch Money Away From Broken-Down Schools
by Paul Buchheit
Cuts to Head Start and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program have taken food away from schoolchildren. The cuts are directly related to the dramatic dropoff in federal corporate tax revenue.
Tax avoidance is just as bad at the state level, which is a much greater source of K-12 educational funding. Both individuals and corporations are paying less state taxes than ever before. As a result, our public schools, the most important expression of a society working together to secure future generations, are being defunded and dismantled and left to decay.
It may be the ugliest extreme of inequality in our country -- tax avoidance by the rich vs. broken-down schools.
Rich White Male Tax Avoidance
According to a Standard and Poor's analysis, average annual state tax revenue fell from 10% to 5% between 1980 and 2011, even as the share of total income for the top 1% of earners doubled. The top 10% and the top 500 CEOs are predominately white males. Our country's missing tax revenue can be found in their growing stock portfolios.
Corporate Tax Cheats
Walgreens and Burger King are the most recent manifestations of the so-called inversions that allow companies to skip out on the country that made them successful. They don't want to pay for decades of publicly funded research in technology and medicine; a legal system that protects patents and intellectual property; infrastructure, including roads and seaports and airports to ship their products; unprecedented amounts of local and national security, a nationwide energy grid to power factories, emergency management (FEMA) to clean up industrial accidents.
More:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/09/22/how-rich-old-white-men-are-taking-lunch-money-away-broken-down-schools
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