GOP wants the 1950s back? I'LL give 'em the 1950s back--MAPA, y'all!
Greetings, fellow Dot Calm Readers, Freedom Fighters, and Truth Crusaders!
Remember how Bernie Sanders fought fire with fire by proposing "Medicare for All" in response to "Either Don't Get Sick Or Just Die Quickly Because We Hate You And Don't Want To Pay One Penny Toward Keeping You Alive And Well Even Though We Want You To Shut Up And Subsidize Our Viagra" tRUmpcare?
Well, I have my own version of fighting fire with fire--a preemptive strike against GOP tax cuts for the rich, if you will.
It's a little thing I've dubbed "MAPA," and it has a back-story...
Let's take a little trip in the Wayback Machine of our imaginations and travel back to the 1950s...
...Back to a time when Dwight D. Eisenhower, affectionately known as "Ike," was president.
Ike represents a lot of things to a lot of people.
If you're a long time Dot Calm Reader, you know that Dot Calm liked Ike and that I like Ike.
Ike wasn't perfect--he had Tricky Dick Nixon as his running mate, after all--but he seems to have been the last Republican presidential candidate with any integrity (Google George H.W. Bush and the CIA, and you'll cringe to think that they named an airport after Allen Dulles...!).
Ike represents a time of apparent order, peace, and prosperity.
To Republicans--i.e., misogynists, white supremacists, homophobes, and other sundry bigots--Ike represents a time when women were underfoot, people of color knew their place, men were free to ignore the complexity of their psyches and sexuality if they so chose, white men's voices went unchallenged by other voices, and we didn't know quite enough about science or have quite enough technology (like the Internet) to spur ever increasing numbers of Americans to dismiss superstition and god wholesale like we do today.
That is the magical MAGA time--the time most haters and genocidal bigots want to drag us back to.
But, to me, Ike represents something far more wonderful--he represents part of the 1950s that Republicans long to forget and love to deny in their revisionist histories.
For example, did you know that, under Eisenhower, America had a booming economy because we had a thriving middle class that was powered by strong unions?
Workers enjoyed paid sick leave, paid vacations, federal holidays, and overtime pay--including time and a half on evenings and double time on weekends.
Workers also enjoyed pensions, meaning that they could retire in peace on a predictable income to spend their golden years with their families.
Employers back then were loyal to their workers, and workers made careers working for the same company for their entire adult lives.
Back then, CEOs and other executives didn't make nearly as much money as they do today compared to average workers--according to HuffPo, CEO-To-Worker Pay Ratio Ballooned 1,000 Percent Since 1950.
That reminds me.
I recall reading that founding father Ben Franklin warned against personal accumulation of too much wealth. For example, when he felt that he had accumulated sufficient wealth to support his family, he refused to patent his inventions, granting them instead to the public commons of knowledge. Franklin was concerned that, if the fledgling republic were to allow personal accumulation of overly disproportional wealth--Franklin was prescient enough to predict that single individuals could, if allowed, own as much wealth as entire nation-states' economies--the beneficiaries would gain undue power and would start buying and selling politicians and perverting America's government to serve themselves instead of the people.
Dayum.
Here's another fun fact that Republicans hate to admit: in the 1950s, America had a world-class lifestyle.
For example, Eisenhower established the interstate system (although I remember reading that General Motors killed mass transit, the bastards).
Under Eisenhower, America also had world-class public schools, which were tasked not so much with teaching students how to think critically or creatively but with preparing students for the work force (you could always go to a fancy private school for a fancy education if your family could afford it).
Eisenhower also oversaw a rich environment of scientific research and technology development.
And how do you think all of this goodness--goodness that We the People have been brainwashed to think doesn't exist and that, if it did, we don't deserve it?
Did you guess "TAXES"?
If you did, you guessed right!
Yessiree, Bob, top tax rates were a wee bit higher under Ike than they are now...
In fact, PolitiFact rates Bernie Sanders's statement that top income tax rates were 90 percent under Eisenhower as a great big fat green TRUE.
90%.
Think about that.
Ninety Everlovin' Percent.
(Now, that's on wages of over $400,000; capital gains were taxed at 25%.)
As far as I know--and a quick search doesn't seem to show otherwise--middle and lower class income tax rates weren't significantly, if any, higher than they are today. For all I know, they could've been lower under Ike than they are today (I'll hafta ask my dad and get back to you).
So, let's ponder for a moment, shall we?
Let's savor what America looked like before Reagan took office and started handing the country over to the robber barons who have us by the throat today--you know the ones, whose policy is so gawd-awful that they have to lie, gerrymander, and vote suppress to keep themselves in power because their ideas suck so badly that they can't possibly win on their ideas without cheating.
Yaaassssss...
Back when the rich paid their fair share. Back when they paid what it actually cost to keep their workers alive and well instead of foisting the costs onto us to subsidize so they could pad their pockets. Back to when we weren't expected to work around the clock for ever shrinking wages. Back when our employers were loyal to us, making it easy for us to be loyal to them. Back when we went home in the evenings and on the weekends or were duly compensated when we had to work instead of being with our families. Back when the concept of "work-life balance" hadn't been invented yet because there was no need to invent it.
Ahhh...well, that was a nice daydream while it lasted, but our Wayback Machine has rudely snapped us back to the somewhat less idyllic present.
Ouch.
Let's recap...
We all know the Republican vision for America: a return to the dystopian societal aspects of the 1950s along with today's increasingly unequal treatment of the rich compared to increasingly impoverished masses consisting of more and more of us. Republicans want to pair the worst of the past with the worst of the present and devolve from there.
What I propose--and what I am tweeting and Resistbot'ing daily--is the exact opposite of the Republican dystopia: a return to the far more functional and egalitarian economy of the 1950s along with increasingly egalitarian social policy. I want to take the best of the past and the best of the present and evolve from there.
In short, I want to Make Affluents Pay Again
("affluents" being the rich-person version of "poors").
In other words, I think we should reestablish the 90% top income tax rate but expand it to include ALL income, be it from wages or investments or capital gains or whatever.
I'll be generous: let's tax every penny over $5 million/year at 90%--I don't care who you are or where you live, you can afford a two-bedroom apartment and a car and food for a family of four on $5 million/year, and we could easily index annually for inflation and cost of living.
Hell, double the cap and start taxing at 90% for every penny over $10 million/year.
I see nothing but benefits in doing this.
For one, it's a start toward getting big money out of politics by taking it away from the thieves, cons, and mischief-makers and putting it back where it belongs--working for Us the People.
After all, WE are the ones working, being more productive every year, and generating all that money in the first place. WE are the engine of the economy, so WE should reap the benefits--the fruits of our own labors, after all.
Getting big money out of politics is the first step toward cleaning up our political system, which is the first step toward restoring America's civil society and pointing it in the right direction to take care of all its citizens. Using the money we take out of politics to fact-check our media and thus educate the public is another step, as is eliminating all private political donations and financing all campaigns with public money to ensure that all candidates receive free, fair, and equal media coverage and opportunities to present their ideas--which we'll also fact check in real time during speeches and debates. Oh, and if you don't present your tax returns, your physical exam results, your transcripts, and your psychological exam results, you don't get onto the ballot. (I gno--it's beyond awful to have to write such a disgustingly detailed and invasive list...but, thanks to tRUmp, 'tis what 'tis.)
Speaking of cleaning up our political system, after if not during tRUmp, we will have to codify all the unwritten rules and norms that 100% of the previous occupants of the Oval instinctively respected--you know, the rules and norms tRUmp smashes every day. This way, we can start putting safeguards in place to prevent future occupants of the Oval from engaging wholesale in the lawlessness and corruption that are tRUmp's hallmark.
Since codifying the presidency shouldn't cost too much in the grand scheme of things, with a 90% top tax rate and no big money in politics, we should have plenty of money to redistrict our maps fairly, ending partisan gerrymandering.
And we'll also have plenty of money to establish nationwide automatic voter registration and mail-in paper ballots for every election.
We can reestablish regulations to keep the government and the corporations from killing us. We can resurrect the watchdogs that keep us safe from the kind of greed that kills.
We also need to enforce our laws fairly, equally, so that no one--and I mean NO ONE--is above the law. Right now, the more powerful you are, the less you are subject to enforcement of the law--especially if you're white and male. If you're Black, police can riddle you with bullets simply for the capital offense of having melanin in your skin. Hell, one Republican lawmaker wants to make vandalism a capital offense if the "victim" is a racist symbol of Black oppression that glorifies slavery--in other words, he thinks that the life of what he assumes to be a Black person is LESS important than the PROPERTY that is a confederate statue that someone sprayed paint onto. Gimme a fucking break...but I digress.
I also vote for tying a minimum, living, wage to Congress's salaries and letting constituents vote on raises, so that Congress never again gets to vote itself raise after raise after raise while letting the people's wages stagnate. Congress must also be subject to every rule and law it wants to impose on the people--no Cadillac health care for them and Republican death care for us.
The last piece of the clean-up is to restructure our economy to stop key entities from ever being for-profit--like education, health care, pharmaceuticals, insurance, prisons, and the media just to hit the highlights. Anything where profit motivates to deny or warp services must be made non-profit by law, PERIOD. Speaking of which, maybe my own industry--DoD--should go non-profit to divest the "Beltway bandits" of their incentive to build more and more and bigger and better shiny things that fly or go boom just because they can. Ike warned us about the military-industrial complex, after all.
And that brings me to what we can do once the rich stop robbing us blind and start paying their fair share--their membership dues--toward the society that benefits them the most.
We'll be able to rebuild our failing infrastructure, clean up all the toxic mess that the corporations are dumping into our environment, and fire up Hillary's clean energy program just for starters.
We can reestablish world-class scientific research, using the tax money we collect when the rich pay their fair share to fund our universities and government labs to do the kind of research that corporations are tempted to bias when they do it.
We can pay workers what they're really worth--which is a free market principle, after all. Instead of forcing middle- and lower-class taxpayers to subsidize the rich for their workers through food stamps and Welfare, we can restructure the economy so that employers support the workers who support them, just like they used to do. Think about it: if you're faced with paying 90% in taxes so that the government can take care of your workers or voluntarily paying your workers living wages and decent benefits, which would you do? Wouldn't you opt for taking care of your own workers and spending the money as you see fit rather than letting it pass through government hands first? If not, at least your workers would survive to work for you year after year if you paid enough taxes to let the government take care of them properly if you were unable or unwilling.
But just to make sure we keep businesses in line, we should reestablish strong unions, rooting out the flaws and abuses that gave the corporations the inroads they needed to take the unions of Ike's era out of play.
Last on my list but not least, we can use the money we collect from the 90% tax rate to reestablish world-class public schools--and we can teach creative and critical thinking skills for a change. The combination of educating our adult population by cleaning up our media and educating our children to think critically early on would advance society far beyond the tiny little box we've been brainwashed into accepting and thinking is the best in the world. We can nurture new generations of scientists, researchers, and thinkers. We can reclaim our technical edge before it's too late--before China embeds itself too deeply as the world's sole technology inventor for us to dislodge it. We can invent, develop, and build technologies to drive the future, making life better for everyone on the planet. Doesn't that seem like a more worthwhile goal than the dominionist ideal of zealot ideologues like Betsy DeVos to revert to the Dark Ages, steeping our children in superstition and fear and mistrust of science?
If we take the approach of reinstituting the 90% top tax rate so we can make the rich pay their fair share and so we can clean up our politics and economy, we could finally see what America would look like if we put people ahead of profit--human life ahead of property. It might not be easy or quick, and it wouldn't be perfect, but I think it would be well worth it. It would be stabilizing. It would be sustainable. It would be exportable.
And I think it would be glorious.
So, whaddaya say? MAPA, y'all?
Remember what I said about reorganizing le blawg into separate pages? I hope to work on that this weekend. If I get tuit, you'll be the second to know (me being first).
Until next time, pour yourself a Fireball and treat yourself to some chocolate on my behalf. And always remember...never forget...I lurves ya madleh!
In fact, PolitiFact rates Bernie Sanders's statement that top income tax rates were 90 percent under Eisenhower as a great big fat green TRUE.
90%.
Think about that.
Ninety Everlovin' Percent.
(Now, that's on wages of over $400,000; capital gains were taxed at 25%.)
As far as I know--and a quick search doesn't seem to show otherwise--middle and lower class income tax rates weren't significantly, if any, higher than they are today. For all I know, they could've been lower under Ike than they are today (I'll hafta ask my dad and get back to you).
So, let's ponder for a moment, shall we?
Let's savor what America looked like before Reagan took office and started handing the country over to the robber barons who have us by the throat today--you know the ones, whose policy is so gawd-awful that they have to lie, gerrymander, and vote suppress to keep themselves in power because their ideas suck so badly that they can't possibly win on their ideas without cheating.
Yaaassssss...
Back when the rich paid their fair share. Back when they paid what it actually cost to keep their workers alive and well instead of foisting the costs onto us to subsidize so they could pad their pockets. Back to when we weren't expected to work around the clock for ever shrinking wages. Back when our employers were loyal to us, making it easy for us to be loyal to them. Back when we went home in the evenings and on the weekends or were duly compensated when we had to work instead of being with our families. Back when the concept of "work-life balance" hadn't been invented yet because there was no need to invent it.
Ahhh...well, that was a nice daydream while it lasted, but our Wayback Machine has rudely snapped us back to the somewhat less idyllic present.
Ouch.
Let's recap...
We all know the Republican vision for America: a return to the dystopian societal aspects of the 1950s along with today's increasingly unequal treatment of the rich compared to increasingly impoverished masses consisting of more and more of us. Republicans want to pair the worst of the past with the worst of the present and devolve from there.
What I propose--and what I am tweeting and Resistbot'ing daily--is the exact opposite of the Republican dystopia: a return to the far more functional and egalitarian economy of the 1950s along with increasingly egalitarian social policy. I want to take the best of the past and the best of the present and evolve from there.
In short, I want to Make Affluents Pay Again
("affluents" being the rich-person version of "poors").
In other words, I think we should reestablish the 90% top income tax rate but expand it to include ALL income, be it from wages or investments or capital gains or whatever.
I'll be generous: let's tax every penny over $5 million/year at 90%--I don't care who you are or where you live, you can afford a two-bedroom apartment and a car and food for a family of four on $5 million/year, and we could easily index annually for inflation and cost of living.
Hell, double the cap and start taxing at 90% for every penny over $10 million/year.
I see nothing but benefits in doing this.
For one, it's a start toward getting big money out of politics by taking it away from the thieves, cons, and mischief-makers and putting it back where it belongs--working for Us the People.
After all, WE are the ones working, being more productive every year, and generating all that money in the first place. WE are the engine of the economy, so WE should reap the benefits--the fruits of our own labors, after all.
Getting big money out of politics is the first step toward cleaning up our political system, which is the first step toward restoring America's civil society and pointing it in the right direction to take care of all its citizens. Using the money we take out of politics to fact-check our media and thus educate the public is another step, as is eliminating all private political donations and financing all campaigns with public money to ensure that all candidates receive free, fair, and equal media coverage and opportunities to present their ideas--which we'll also fact check in real time during speeches and debates. Oh, and if you don't present your tax returns, your physical exam results, your transcripts, and your psychological exam results, you don't get onto the ballot. (I gno--it's beyond awful to have to write such a disgustingly detailed and invasive list...but, thanks to tRUmp, 'tis what 'tis.)
Speaking of cleaning up our political system, after if not during tRUmp, we will have to codify all the unwritten rules and norms that 100% of the previous occupants of the Oval instinctively respected--you know, the rules and norms tRUmp smashes every day. This way, we can start putting safeguards in place to prevent future occupants of the Oval from engaging wholesale in the lawlessness and corruption that are tRUmp's hallmark.
Since codifying the presidency shouldn't cost too much in the grand scheme of things, with a 90% top tax rate and no big money in politics, we should have plenty of money to redistrict our maps fairly, ending partisan gerrymandering.
And we'll also have plenty of money to establish nationwide automatic voter registration and mail-in paper ballots for every election.
We can reestablish regulations to keep the government and the corporations from killing us. We can resurrect the watchdogs that keep us safe from the kind of greed that kills.
We also need to enforce our laws fairly, equally, so that no one--and I mean NO ONE--is above the law. Right now, the more powerful you are, the less you are subject to enforcement of the law--especially if you're white and male. If you're Black, police can riddle you with bullets simply for the capital offense of having melanin in your skin. Hell, one Republican lawmaker wants to make vandalism a capital offense if the "victim" is a racist symbol of Black oppression that glorifies slavery--in other words, he thinks that the life of what he assumes to be a Black person is LESS important than the PROPERTY that is a confederate statue that someone sprayed paint onto. Gimme a fucking break...but I digress.
I also vote for tying a minimum, living, wage to Congress's salaries and letting constituents vote on raises, so that Congress never again gets to vote itself raise after raise after raise while letting the people's wages stagnate. Congress must also be subject to every rule and law it wants to impose on the people--no Cadillac health care for them and Republican death care for us.
The last piece of the clean-up is to restructure our economy to stop key entities from ever being for-profit--like education, health care, pharmaceuticals, insurance, prisons, and the media just to hit the highlights. Anything where profit motivates to deny or warp services must be made non-profit by law, PERIOD. Speaking of which, maybe my own industry--DoD--should go non-profit to divest the "Beltway bandits" of their incentive to build more and more and bigger and better shiny things that fly or go boom just because they can. Ike warned us about the military-industrial complex, after all.
And that brings me to what we can do once the rich stop robbing us blind and start paying their fair share--their membership dues--toward the society that benefits them the most.
We'll be able to rebuild our failing infrastructure, clean up all the toxic mess that the corporations are dumping into our environment, and fire up Hillary's clean energy program just for starters.
We can reestablish world-class scientific research, using the tax money we collect when the rich pay their fair share to fund our universities and government labs to do the kind of research that corporations are tempted to bias when they do it.
We can pay workers what they're really worth--which is a free market principle, after all. Instead of forcing middle- and lower-class taxpayers to subsidize the rich for their workers through food stamps and Welfare, we can restructure the economy so that employers support the workers who support them, just like they used to do. Think about it: if you're faced with paying 90% in taxes so that the government can take care of your workers or voluntarily paying your workers living wages and decent benefits, which would you do? Wouldn't you opt for taking care of your own workers and spending the money as you see fit rather than letting it pass through government hands first? If not, at least your workers would survive to work for you year after year if you paid enough taxes to let the government take care of them properly if you were unable or unwilling.
But just to make sure we keep businesses in line, we should reestablish strong unions, rooting out the flaws and abuses that gave the corporations the inroads they needed to take the unions of Ike's era out of play.
Last on my list but not least, we can use the money we collect from the 90% tax rate to reestablish world-class public schools--and we can teach creative and critical thinking skills for a change. The combination of educating our adult population by cleaning up our media and educating our children to think critically early on would advance society far beyond the tiny little box we've been brainwashed into accepting and thinking is the best in the world. We can nurture new generations of scientists, researchers, and thinkers. We can reclaim our technical edge before it's too late--before China embeds itself too deeply as the world's sole technology inventor for us to dislodge it. We can invent, develop, and build technologies to drive the future, making life better for everyone on the planet. Doesn't that seem like a more worthwhile goal than the dominionist ideal of zealot ideologues like Betsy DeVos to revert to the Dark Ages, steeping our children in superstition and fear and mistrust of science?
If we take the approach of reinstituting the 90% top tax rate so we can make the rich pay their fair share and so we can clean up our politics and economy, we could finally see what America would look like if we put people ahead of profit--human life ahead of property. It might not be easy or quick, and it wouldn't be perfect, but I think it would be well worth it. It would be stabilizing. It would be sustainable. It would be exportable.
And I think it would be glorious.
So, whaddaya say? MAPA, y'all?
-----
Remember what I said about reorganizing le blawg into separate pages? I hope to work on that this weekend. If I get tuit, you'll be the second to know (me being first).
Until next time, pour yourself a Fireball and treat yourself to some chocolate on my behalf. And always remember...never forget...I lurves ya madleh!
*****
News flash, GOP--
tRUmp doesn't like you.
When he consolidates power,
your rich donors
won't need you any more.
Then you'll be
in the same situation
as the rest of us--
fucked.
Aren't you glad
you jumped through your own assholes
to install your boi tRUmp?
*****
*****
posted by Dot Calm @ 9:59 PM
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