Twenty-two years ago, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote for The New York Times Magazine about the era in which he and I both grew up, when the top income tax rate on the morbidly rich ran between 74 and 90 percent. Back then most business people avoided politics, preferring to stick to running their companies; in large part this was because when the rich seized political control of America in the Roaring 20s they crashed the economy so bad they were shamed into staying out of the political arena. Corporate executives lived and worked in normal — albeit upscale — neighborhoods (watch an episode of Bewitched or The Dick Van Dyke Show from the 1960s to see the homes Madison Avenue executives and media bigwigs lived in), and workers made enough to sustain a decent lifestyle.
By 1980, the middle-class encompassed as much as 55 to 60% of us, depending on whose numbers you’re using. Today it is well down in the 40s. This middle class paradise (at least for white people) came about following the Republican Great Depression because President Roosevelt imposed a 90 percent top income tax bracket after about $2 million/year in today’s money, which helped build that extraordinary middle class of the 1940s-1980s era.
In the four-plus decades since Ronald Reagan and his Republicans turned America’s tax code on its head and transformed the merely well-off into the morbidly rich, things have changed a lot. Today, the world’s richest man buys the world’s largest social media site just to promote his own social and political biases. The world’s second richest man shot himself into outer space on a penis-shaped rocket after buying America’s second largest newspaper, which now regularly scolds Democrats.
And the Australian billionaire Murdoch dynasty daily pumps political and cultural poison into the homes of millions of Americans, producing billions in profits while elevating and keeping naked fascists’ political power. While five Republicans on the Supreme Court legalizing political bribery accounts for some of this, the explosion of great wealth at the top, and homelessness and poverty at the bottom, flow almost exclusively from the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts. Thus, there are three primary reasons why we must raise the top tax rates on corporations and the morbidly rich: — Low income taxes at the top encourage oligarchy, where politicians become mere front men for great wealth and democracy is left in the dust.
— Low income taxes at the top encourage an explosion of wealth among the already-rich, accompanied by a collapse of the middle class. — Low income taxes at the top deprive government of the revenue it needs to maintain the foundations of life for small businesses and working class people. Back in the 1935-1981 era, when corporate taxes topped out at 48% and the top personal income tax bracket ran between 74% and 91%, CEOs only took out of their companies at most 30 times what they paid their workers.
(Today it’s often hundreds or thousands of times what workers make.) When Reagan came into office in 1981, there were only 13 billionaires in America. Most had inherited much of their initial money.
The American middle class was growing faster than any other time in world history, and it was government policies protecting working people and small businesses (particularly high taxes on the very rich) that facilitated much of that growth. Americans understood, as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously said : America chose democracy, and elected FDR to the White House four times, then followed that with Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Jack Kennedy all who advocated and maintained that top 91% personal and 48% corporate income tax rate. LBJ dropped it to 74% (actually raising taxes on rich people because he closed so many loopholes), and it stayed there through the administrations of Nixon, Ford, and Carter.
Throughout those 50+ years, Congress passed laws that reflected what the average working people of our nation wanted while the nation’s debt continue to decline to a mere $800 billion — $0.8 trillion — when Ronald Reagan came into office. We paid for all of these with income and FICA taxes: Social Security the minimum wage unemployment insurance world class public schools nonprofit requirements for hospitals and health insurance companies free to very inexpensive state colleges the right to unionize civil rights and voting rights legislation publicly-owned utilities new highways and airports quality mass transit anti-trust laws to maintain competition and protect small businesses Medicare The EPA Medicaid school lunch programs and “food stamps” workplace nondiscrimination for women and racial minorities tax-deductibility for interest payments on car loans and credit cards federal deposit insurance to protect people from bank failures Head Start literally hundreds of laws that protected consumers and the environment from corporate predation and dangerous products.
As Michael Hiltzik notes in his book The New Deal: A Modern History , just one of FDR’s programs, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), used that top 91% personal and 48% corporate income tax bracket to rebuild America from top to bottom: Republicans, representing the interests of the morbidly rich, opposed all of it. Since the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s, when he cut the top tax rate down to 27%, the top income tax bracket has so collapsed and been shot-through with holes that the average billionaire is paying somewhere between 3 and 8 percent tax on his income. America’s second richest man, Jeff Bezos, paid less than 1 percent .
When that revenue shrank under tax cuts from Reagan, Bush, and Trump, so did many of the programs listed above. But an even worse side-effect of cutting the top tax rates has been the explosion of great wealth at the top that has directly pushed the collapse of the American middle class and the weakening of American democracy. Congress no longer passes legislation the majority of Americans want: the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United that corporate “persons” and the new billionaires created after Reagan’s tax cuts could own their very own politicians and judges, and those wholly owned politicians and judges, in gratitude, could block anything of consequence that might require new taxes.
This has led to widespread cynicism and political disengagement by working class people, which has become a dagger to the heart of democracy. The middle class has fallen from about two-thirds of us to fewer than half of us, and even at that it takes two incomes to maintain a lifestyle a single income could support before Reagan. As the headline at TIME Magazine reads : Inequality has exploded: the morbidly rich now have so much cash slopping around that they’re using their pocket change to compete on who has the largest mega-yacht, who can throw the most money into politics, and to build luxury survivalist bunkers that resemble small underground cities.
Which brings us back to Brandeis’ assertion. With the election of 1980, Americans — most unknowingly — chose great wealth over democracy, oligarchy over a middle class, billionaires over working people. As working class Americans got poorer and poorer, the GOP had to come up with increasingly outrageous pitches to keep their votes.
Attacking racial minorities and women in the workplace (“Feminazis”) worked well for Republicans for the better part of the first 20 years, and in the past 20 years they added Muslims, immigrants, and trans people to their hate-acceptable hit list. Singling groups out for violence this year, they’ve most recently added journalists and elected Democrats to their list. Now they’re increasingly relying on Qanon conspiracists, neo-Nazis, religious fanatics, anti-abortion/anti-woman incel freaks, and conspiracy nuts to fill out the edges of the voting bloc that keeps them in power.
Which puts the survival of our democratic republic itself at risk. We’re following a path Russia trod in the late 1990s when, pressured by George HW Bush and Bill Clinton, they slashed taxes and regulation and used Milton Friedman’s neoliberal “shock therapy” to sell off and privatize huge swatches of the government’s functions. And the American oligarchs’ pet politicians on the right are sounding more and more like Putin every day, from banning books to trashing LGBTQ + folks to promoting a white “Christian” ethnostate to raving about minority immigrants and turning their backs on democracies like Ukraine .
Democrats and the Biden administration tried this past year to re-strengthen the American middle class, promoting a new top income tax bracket on those whose net worth exceeds $100 million. It’s a start — although Republicans successfully blocked it for the moment — but it’s nothing close to what will be necessary to restore a functioning democracy and a vibrant middle class. And Republicans in Congress continue to prevent things average Americans want and countries like Canada , Australia, and all of Europe already have, with free or affordable college and medical care at the top of that list.
It’s beyond time for America’s morbidly rich and biggest corporations to go back to doing business and making money, rather than using their great wealth to buy politicians, judges, and public opinion. To become good citizens again, rather than playing the role of political kingmakers in an anti-democratic oligarchy. That will require overturning Citizens United, reinstating campaign contribution limits , and raising income taxes on the morbidly rich and corporations back to at least the 74 percent they were at when Reagan took office and began his infamous War On Working PeopleTM .
While that’s going to be a hell of a lift if Democrats can seize control of DC this fall, it’s the first step to unwinding the American Oligarchy that Reaganism has created. Without it, we could easily see more decades of plutocracy with cranky billionaires and their monopolies eventually controlling every aspect of our lives. New York City Mayor Eric Adams was reportedly subpoenaed as part of a federal investigation into corruption and unlawful campaign donations related to his 2021 campaign.
Three subpoenas were served in July , The New York Times reported. They seek an array of materials such as texts, documents and other communications, and reportedly seek information on the travel of Adams, his aides and others, as well as fundraising activities. Specifically, the subpoenas were issued to Adams, City Hall and Adams' mayoral campaign , according to CNN .
The subpoena to City Hall seeks information including about his travel to Turkey . ALSO READ: Harris has figured out Trump’s greatest liability Investigators are looking into whether Adams and his campaign schemed with the Turkish government to receive unlawful foreign donations, as well as free flight upgrades Adams received from Turkish Airlines. It's also looking into whether the fire department was pushed to authorize a new skyscraper consulate for the country in Manhattan facing safety questions, the Times reported.
Fabien Levy, a spokesperson for Adams, told CNN that Adams expects everyone to cooperate and "swiftly bring this investigation to a close." “As a former member of law enforcement, the mayor has been clear over the last nine months that he will cooperate with any investigation underway. Nothing has changed,” Levy said.
A CNN panel erupted into chaos Thursday night with a Republican lawmaker forcefully denying she's racist while a university professor insisted she's accomplishing racism even if it's not intended. The heated interaction on "NewsNight" with host Abby Phillip came during a discussion over the correct pronunciation of Vice President Kamala Harris ' name. Michael Eric Dyson , a professor of African American studies at Vanderbilt University, called Rep.
Nancy Mace (R-SC) a "wonderful human being" but said she disrespects Harris by saying, "You can call her whatever you want." "I know you don't intend it to be that way, that's the history and legacy of white disregard for the humanity of Black people," he said. Mace shot back, "Oh, so now you're calling me a racist? That is b.
s. That is complete b.s.
" Read also: Donald Trump deep in debt while foreign money keeps coming: disclosure As the two talked over one another, Dyson noted that while he didn't call her a "racist," "you don't have to intend racism to accomplish it." "Your disrespect of Kamala Harris is part of a tradition of disrespect," he said. "You are intending that I am racist and that is offensive and it's wrong," Mace said, talking in unison with Dyson.
When Dyson insisted he wasn't calling Mace a racist, she doubled down: "You are. You absolutely are and that is disgusting." Later in the clip, Dyson insists Mace pronounce Harris' first name right.
When she doesn't, the panel in unison shouts: "Kah-muh-la!" Democratic strategist Keith Boykin then shouts, "You're doing this on purpose congresswoman!" Watch the heated exchange below or at this link . A CNN panel ahead of former President Donald Trump's press conference at his Bedminster golf club grew tense and combative after theGrio correspondent Natasha Alford called out a Republican strategist for both mispronouncing Vice President Kamala Harris' name, and falsely blaming a number of longstanding national policy challenges on her four years in the vice presidency. "Trump's out here doing press conferences, and Harris is interviewing with her running mate," said GOP strategist Scott Jennings .
"We need to know more about this candidacy because of the way it came about and the fact that it's never received a single vote ever in a primary." "Donald Trump's press conferences are full of lies," said Alford. "I think it was NPR that counted 162 lies and distortions .
.. we've seen him unhinged, off the rails, doing personal attacks.
So there's not substance there. And when we talk about the Biden/Trump debate? It's not that Joe Biden didn't have substantive answers. His style, his performance, his, delivery was poor and everybody saw that with their own eyes, and that contributed to why he is no longer running for president.
But we have to show the American people that it's not just about style, it is about substance. And so what we're saying is this is an opportunity for a fair conversation. Let them both talk policy and let Americans decide.
" Another GOP strategist, Kristin Davison chimed in. "But when you look at — I mean, this is the second press conference that Trump has done in two weeks. Kamala has not done an interview—" ALSO READ: Harris has figured out Trump’s greatest liability "It's Kah-muh-la," cut in Alford.
"He wants us to say it wrong. Kah-muh-la Harris." "You can go on about whatever lies you want to outline, we're not getting — we're getting a revised reality from the Biden/Harris administration," insisted Davison.
"They want to pretend like they didn't cause the problems that we are seeing right now. Inflation, the crisis at the border, crime is skyrocketing, the fentanyl crisis. They had four years to fix it.
She's been in office for four years. What has she done?" "They didn't cause the crisis at the border," shot back Alford, to which the GOP commentators around the table erupted, and Jennings began shaking his head. "We have had a problem with immigration for multiple administrations .
.. this is a problem, we're not, we're not giving them complex nuanced conversations about how these problems actually play out.
" Watch the video below or at the link here . - YouTube www.youtube.
com.
