Written by Walter Hecht   

On strike; shut it down. Words usually associated with union actions, but in today's world, more closely associated with the "job creators" of the 1% and their hired spokespersons in the GOP. They would have us believe that all of the 1% are John Galts from Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged. They will withhold their job creation until we give them what they want, less regulation and fewer taxes. In fact, the real job creators are the 99% who by their purchases create demand for goods and services and thus create jobs. Jobs are not being created because the so-called end of the Great Recession has seen almost all of income growth go to the 1%, leaving the 99% struggling. If the 99% cannot afford much beyond basic necessities, jobs will not be created.

The 1% demand fewer regulations and less taxation. They want to reduce costs and increase profits by polluting the air we breathe and the water we drink, but not their air and water. They drink bottled water and live in gated communities, far from the rest of us. They refuse to pay their fair share of taxes. Tax reform to them means eliminating the IRS, our tax watchdog, and substituting the so-called "Fair Tax" for all other forms of taxation. The "Fair Tax" is a typically misnamed tactic of the wealthy to skew the tax code to favor themselves at the expense of the rest of us. The "Fair Tax" is a regressive tax on consumption that ignores income and capital gains. Supposedly it would generate enough income to allow the elimination of the progressive income tax, the capital gains tax and the inheritance tax. Don't be fooled; the revenue raised would fund a much smaller Federal government, one without most social safety net programs.