Written by Richard Raznikov   

There’s a ‘controversy’ right now over the recommendations of Obama’s ‘bipartisan’ tax commission, where the report calls for reductions in Social Security and Medicare, the raising of the Social Security age qualification, elimination of the home mortgage deduction, and some cuts in defense spending. The news media, as usual, haven’t the faintest notion what’s going on.

In the newspaper today, the story is that both the ‘right’ and the ‘left’ are unhappy with the proposals.

According to the committee, the combination of cuts and fiddling would ‘save’ four trillion smackers over a period of time. That’s a lot of smackers.

Meanwhile, and not coincidentally, the ‘Bush tax cuts’ are expiring amidst typical political posturings. The Republicans, blithely ignoring the plain fact that giving tax breaks to billionaires does nothing to help the economy, are insisting that the rich people’s tax be extended. The Democrats, no surprise, can’t make up their minds, not wanting to offend their billionaire supporters.

Here’s some amazing news: money paid to the middle class and to the poor –– two groups becoming less distinguishable by the day –– gets fed into the economy. People have to pay for food and sometimes heating. In some places in America, people need shoes to wear. Money paid to the wealthy does not get fed into the economy, unless it’s the rarified economy of private jets and racing sloops.

You want to do something to help the nation’s economy? Give everyone a guaranteed minimum income and tax the shit out of the rich. That pretty much covers it.

Why that’s Communism! scream the capitalist dupes. Oh, I suppose so, only consider this:

We already pay a guaranteed minimum income, except that we pay it in terms of unemployment coverage, medicare and medicaid, food stamps, arrests and the costs of incarceration. You know what it costs to house one inmate in one of those CCA private prison operations? More than it would cost to give them a suite at the Fairmont Hotel, with room service and cable television.

Communism, my ass. A guaranteed annual income is a conservative idea. To begin with, it would wipe out a nice chunk of the government bureaucracy, and who could be against that? It would effectively end the ‘welfare state’ in the demeaning terms which it has taken on, but it wouldn’t harm ‘individual initiative’ because anybody who wants a new Dodge Ram pickup would have to work to get one.

As for taxing the rich. What’s so crazy about that? We live in a society which is the most powerful and wealthy in world history, yet millions of people are struggling to survive. Children are suffering from malnutrition. Millions, including a large number of war veterans, are homeless. And corporate executives are handing themselves multi-million-dollar ‘bonuses’. Crazy? What we’ve got now is what’s crazy. Also shameful.

Let’s get serious here. We all know the situation. We all know who’s been doing what to whom.

The greatest period of growth in America occurred at a time when the highest tax bracket was close to 90%. Ninety percent. Nine dollars out of every ten. Is this sinking in? It didn’t impoverish the Rockefellers; they still had their limos and palaces. But it gave a solvent country the wherewithal to nurture a thriving economy.

It remains to be seen how long it’s going to take this country to figure it out.