Editor’s note: This commentary is by Dan DeWalt, an artisan and activist interested in democracy and the Constitution. He writes from South Newfane.
[S]o let’s get this straight – rich and middle class Americans (including Vermonters, according to the governor) can’t tolerate any further tax increases. Their tax burden is already just too great and a hike would be untenable.
OK. So just what is tenable?
It’s sad but simply unavoidable that the richest nation on Earth has to accept a large and desperate homeless population permanently ensconced in our cities and towns.
It’s unfortunate but true that unless you come from the very top tiers of society, a good college education is either entirely unaffordable, or it will saddle you with unmanageable debt until you’re old enough for retirement (if you’re lucky enough to be able to retire). And yes, if you came from a family that has not yet been college educated, your chances for financial success and security are drastically less (if not non-existent) than for those whose parents are college graduates.
If you are black or brown, you have a much greater chance of living in poverty. Living in poverty offers a never-ending series of opportunities to find yourself bankrupt or in jail, and almost no opportunities to get ahead. If your jail time was due to a felony, you lose any chance of getting college grants or loans from the government, essentially assuring that you will never escape poverty unless you become a highly successful criminal. In most states (except Vermont and Maine) you also lose your right to vote. (This is a rare instance where the “justice” system is color-blind.)
It’s tough luck, but if you get sick and can’t afford insurance, you just might have to lose your house and your savings, if you had any. If you’re poor and don’t live near a generous hospital, you have a much greater chance of dying from lack of adequate health care.
Today’s income inequality, as tenable as we would will it to be, is truly untenable. How sad it will be if we must crumble as a prosperous nation before we are able to become a just and caring nation.
It doesn’t seem right, but we’ll just have to accept that when the financial industry that owns our Congress makes rash and dangerous financial moves costing us billions, they can count on the government to bail them out with our tax dollars and they can rest easy knowing that neither they nor their institutions will ever be vigorously (if at all) prosecuted for their crimes.
It’s too bad that our industries continue to poison our lands and waters, but destroying the landscape has always been part and parcel of corporate profits and it’s unlikely they would want to stop now.
Yes, these are all things that we are expected to accept and live with, but we could never live with a tax hike for Americans making $500,000 and more per year. It’s unlikely Congress will agree with Obama’s pathetically meager suggestion to raise taxes on couples who make more than $500,000 per year.
Consider for a moment. If we bring in $1,000 or more per week but can’t afford a penny more in taxes to reduce inequality in this country, then we have been snookered by a sick materialism masquerading as the American Dream. If we can’t look out beyond “me and mine” and embrace the value of caring for all of society, if our need to upgrade or maintain our “lifestyle” blinds us to the unequal and vastly superior advantage that we have compared to others, then whether we realize it or not, we are another link in the chain that will eventually pull this American edifice of materialism crumbling to the ground. Today’s income inequality, as tenable as we would will it to be, is truly untenable. How sad it will be if we must crumble as a prosperous nation before we are able to become a just and caring nation.
If, in defending our need for every penny of our middle or upper class salaries, we point to the high cost of college for our kids, or daycare costs because we have to work multiple jobs, or the low wages that necessitate having more than one job, or the continuing high cost of health insurance, or the need for material objects to help take our minds off of the hamster wheel that seems to be our life, perhaps we should be asking ourselves other questions.
Whose idea is it that we live our lives in this fashion? Do we benefit from this American version of cultural obsession with personal and material ambition? And more importantly, who does benefit? Who really reaps the reward from Americans standing united against paying taxes to improve society? Who makes the profits from all the systems in our society that victimize regular folks while taking their dollars, their labor and their life forces? Who stacks the deck to reap financial windfalls from our government while preaching the need for austerity, belt-tightening and bootstrap lifting for the rest of us?
The governor began his biannual budget address decrying the terrible gap in income equality, but he didn’t follow with a single suggestion on how we might address it. Most of the reaction to the speech has been about his suggested payroll tax increase which will only partially ease the pain of budget cuts that will harm the most vulnerable Vermonters. Why can we accept the loss of social services that might help keep a kid out of prison, or off of drugs, or simply alive and warm, but a 0.7 percent payroll tax increase is unacceptable? We need to examine our reasons for choosing the values we have embraced as a society. Arguably they are not our values. They are the ones that have been skillfully promulgated and advanced to serve the interests of the few, promote individualism in order to prevent mass consciousness, and actively destroying our democracy and our moral center as a nation. Suffering from a tax increase will seem like child’s play compared to dealing with the collapse of the bloated economy of greed that rules us now.
