Politspective
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“Same-sex couples should be able to get married.”—President Obama
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(Photo Courtesy 401k)
BY ISRAEL ORTEGA
Just in time for the start of the general election, President Obama is seeking to cast himself as a man of the people by pushing for a millionaire’s tax to promote a more equitable and fair society. It’s a predictable pitch that the president has campaigned on before. As his argument goes, the wealthy must pay their “fair share” in order to fund a seemingly limitless government.
And thanks to a number of Spanish language surrogates and a sympathetic Spanish language media, President Obama is getting virtually a free pass convincing many Latinos that enacting the “Buffett Rule,” will help solve our country’s fiscal problems.
Latinos, as all Americans, should read the fine print
It is easy to denounce a President for being populist -specially in a Democracy-, but it sure is not that easy trying to argue that claim without being populist oneself. First of all, asking people with different incomes and assets to pay different taxes is not class warfare, it is fairness. But hey, in an election year, when The Heritage Foundation is seeking to see one of their guys in The White House, using anachronistic terms to revive communistic fears is just necessary. It just isn’t populism when it comes from the right.
The text is full of misleading words and expressions chosen to generate fear and hate. Take for example this sentence: “Instead of providing the full picture on the taxes levied on America’s most successful […]”. Just one thing: being rich is not equal to being successful. If trying to sell a policy suggestion as “punishing success” is not populism, then I don’t know what is. If you haven’t heard of successful people who are not necessarily wealthy or of wealthy people who got rich just by chance, then I’m willing to introduce you to some.
Now, yes, the revenues are a small share of the whole National Debt, but I’m sorry, is just more income than no tax revenue at all. Even better, it is way more money, than spending even more on tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans. And yes, some of the money may not go directly to pay the national debt, but that doesn’t mean that it will be wasted. There are also good things the government can invest in. And Latinos, hear well, because you may be the most benefited.
By the way, even as Latinos represent the biggest and fastest growing minority in the country, they make just a very, very small share of the wealthiest people in the U.S. This huge gap is not because Hispanics are lazy or not so “successful” and it says a lot about how wealth distribution works in the U.S. So don’t worry, Latinos, in fact you should not reject the Buffet Rule, you should embrace it. It very, very probably won’t reach you. And if it does, it well may help to fund education and health for your community and ultimately change the composition of the richest of Americans.
![By IMF [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/John_Maynard_Keynes.jpg)
John Maynard Keynes
Paul Krugman of the NY Times on Austerity and the failing of the Euro.
The debate over equality in our societies and its pursuit trough the government have been subject of constant discussion ever since some people where allowed to have more private possessions than others. Particularly since the late 18th century when the industrial revolution allowed the amassing of great fortunes, the concentration of capital and created for many the illusion of social mobility. People then began demanding for more freedom to do their businesses and the measure of success for a country was not so much how equal or unequal their societies were but how big the cake to be shared was.
Today, we still discuss whether the most important goal of government is the monetary growth of the economy or the equal distribution of the national income between its citizens. Sadly enough, the consensus among politicians and business people still is, that the most relevant goal of any economy is its growth. Moreover, they believe that a state of inequality is better for a society because it rewards those who perform better than the average, and punish those who don’t.
Several studies, principally the work of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, clearly refute this theory and show how inequality is intimately correlated to social diseases like low children’s educational performance, homicides, imprisonment rates, teenage births, low life expectancy and infant mortality, obesity, mental illnesses and others. But most importantly, inequality also leads –contrary to the prevailing thought– to a more inflexible society and to less social mobility.
The more equal a society is, the better-off its citizens are (all of them, even the already well-off). Furthermore –and here the most important reason to pursuit equality in our societies–, equality is the only condition where democracy can be perfectly legitimate. In a world where just a few have the possibility of good education, good health care and sufficient nourishment, the most fundamental spirit of democracy is jeopardized. When some of the citizens are granted more rights, or more possibilities to enforce them, or make its duties less heavy, the principles behind the expression of political claims trough the vote looses its sense.
A shift in the priorities of the political economy would help our civilization in innumerable ways. It would not only make our cities and countries more livable, but it would ensure that the economy develops in a healthy way which does not growth at the expense of future generations.
For a better society, a better world, we will need a policy which has equality as its most important value to measure its progress and where the GNP growth only reflects the real growth of the society and its resources –rather than the growth of necessities within the country. It will be a long way until then, but meanwhile, we will be fighting for it.
