Top marginal income tax rate should be fifty percent

[Overseas]

84. I remember the days when making a decent profit was enough. We weren't crazed about maximizing

profit whatever the cause-- merging and acquiring companies that paid their workers "too much" when cheaper labor could be acquired elsewhere.

I remember when purchasing decisions were made that incorporated relationships and protecting our country's domestic manufacturing.

Then we began the era of great pretending-- Morning in America --ushered in by multinational corporations determined to make quarterly profits the most important factor. Determined to stomp out the sixties and seventies silliness about sustainable development and limits to growth.

They cloaked their mercenary approach to profits above all as "free trade" and pretended that it would ensure that our trading partners' quality of life would be improved and our environmental standards would raise those of our trading partners too. People opposed to "free" trade were characterized as out of touch. Luddites. Anti-progress.

I guess the multinational corporations think tanks and PR agencies figured that if they could sell the USA a "B" actor determined to crush union power then they could sell us anything. And they have certainly embedded a destructive model very deeply in American life. Cheaper cheaper cheaper at all costs. Keep workers' wages low so they'll want cheaper goods too.

Workers wages stagnated as greater and greater profits accrued at the top. Jobs and environmental damage were exported to more compliant countries. Sweatshop workers now had televisions and refridgerators so people who complained about their working conditions were characterized as "elitist." You have a fridge! How dare you deny others that right!

They sold the US public a bill of goods. Give to the rich and we will all prosper, they said. Supply-side economics has been pushed relentlessly on every level. Even getting us to feel rich vicariously through luscious TV shows from Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous to today's "Real" Housewives.

They have had to work very hard because Demand Side Economics is so much more logical and has worked so much better in our history. When we put more people to work with decent wages and working conditions, they had the time and money to spend consuming the goods we produced and our economy prospered. When we taxed the rich more, they shared more of their wealth by investing in their companies and paying workers more.

When we taxed the rich more, we could fund Medicaid to help our fellow citizens afflicted with medical problems and Social Security to keep our seniors out of dire poverty and Medicare to handle the wearing out of our bodies as we age. The majority of Americans share those values. We would rather our tax dollars went there than to fund illegal wars of aggression based on lies.

George Herbert Walker Bush pushed the concept that charity could take care of the poor-- A Thousand Points of Light would do the trick. Luckily, voters disagreed.

But these days the whole Charity Will Do It argument is being pushed again. But why should the rich be able to keep more and more of their tax money to decide which suffering group is most worthy of their largesse, while we poor and middle class citizens have our tax dollars applied without giving us much choice at all? Our tax dollars were given in charity to billionaire perpetrators of fraud on Wall Street and war profiteers.

The ridiculous folly of Supply Side Economics was so apparent in 2008. I really thought Democrats would go big on a return to the more logical and sustainable Demand Side economics. Pay people to repair our infrastructure and we will all win. We will spend our money locally.

But a lot of logical thinking had to be smashed to make supply side and fake free trade appealing to the masses, so here we are as a nation, willing to pretend that climate change isn't happening and we didn't invade Iraq on false pretenses and the war in Afghanistan should continue and Wall Street financiers did not commit fraud, etc etc.

I guess it is time to get back to my housecleaning because I'm rambling again.