STILL PISSED AFTER ALL THESE YEARS…
(Written during the first Bush administration, as a free-lancer for the New Times)
When it comes to dealing with our moribund economy, Congress is about as creative as run off water, and this indictment includes Mr. Rostenkowski, Democrat from Illinois, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who, ordinarily is on my short list of good guys. Not today.
Mr. Rostenkowski has proposed a tax program that is so unenlightened, so short-term in its effect, that I wonder why I am up here in Pismo Beach playing bridge, instead of marching on Washington with my very own domestic program, drawn up on the kitchen table.
In his bill, the Congressman chooses the nicely-rounded figure of $145,000 to mark the upper limits of the middle class. (That, in itself, is a major teehee.) Anyway, couples who earn more than this would be taxed to provide a $200 to $400 tax rebate to people who make between $20,000 and $75,000 a year.
Hell, couples who make, say $50,000 to $75,000 a year don't need no stinkin' handout. (Remember, I am writing in the early 90's.)
What they need is for that grossly unfair tax bill that was slipped by in the mid-eighties to be ash-canned.
(Can you imagine anything more inequitable then indexing people who make $200,000 a year at the same percentage as couples making $80,000 a year, working at two modest-salaried jobs?)
They also need to be able to deduct the interest on their car payments, and plastic again.
As much as I am loath to agree with Mr. Bush, they need a capital gains break as much as the high rollers do, so they can start moving their mom-and-pop real estate around, and get the musical chairs move-up market going again for the sake of everyone in this capitalistic society.
And they need child care centers, staffed by professionals and, if necessary, partially subsidized by the state or federal government.
Most of all $20,000 to $75,000 a year people need jobs.
Blue collars need blue collar work rebuilding the infrastructure of this country, once puffed-up and over-paid CEO's decide to drag themselves back to manufacturing product instead of smoke. These short-term thinkers and greed-tanks deserve short-term jobs, and cement parachutes.
Middle managers need to be re-trained now that the new business hierarchy appears firmly in place, consisting of Deep Thinkers with hair in their ears, at the top, and Grunts at the bottom, and with no middle management to clutter up the coffee room, draining the company with their piddling $40,000 to $60,000 annual salaries, health insurance, pension plans, and nuisance lawsuits when they are summarily dismissed after a quarter-of-a-century of loyal service.
But how can we do all this considering our staggering deficit? As an aside, it is truly interesting that we have the largest deficit in the history of the nation under a Republican president. I can remember when Republicans wore invisible green celluloid eyeshades, and hunched their bony shoulders over ledgers, balancing pennies. But, then again, I can also remember when Republicans were for us staying home and keeping our noses clean, instead of messing around in the internal affairs of nearly every country on earth.
I digress. How may we start to put things in order? Well, instead of "soaking the rich" so each of us can get back the price of a good cashmere sweater, I suggest we "soak the rich" for a National Improvement Program (NIP) with which we shall attempt to pull back together this slum of a country. Gee, we only need schools, highways and highway repair, child-care facilities, a national health plan so we aren't indentured to our jobs for insurance, help for the homeless, and minorities, affordable housing stock, and help for small business and manufacturing.
Also, we need to put functional homeless people and the occupants of prisons to work on a public works program, reminiscent of the WPA. This is not a new idea, but we can't stop pounding away until someone hears. Besides tax breaks they are already getting for on-the-job training of inner-city people, business needs some incentive to re-train middle managers and technicians for honorable work. For instance, as educators making a decent salary.
If you break the financial backs of the little guy, and the middle guy, and the retired guy, and the old guy, who will buy your goods and services once all the acquisitions are acquired and the mergers are merged? What happens, then, to business, the stock market and, sooner or later, the whole country, including the nesters in marble-floored co-op's on Fifth Avenue, sprawling mansions on green lawns flowing down to the sea in Connecticut, and the 50,000 square foot houses in Bel Air? Why, pretty soon nobody can pay his bills, and pretty soon the people who have nothing will come after the people who have something. At the end of the day, playing fair is nothing more than enlightened self-interest.
Why can't the sleazy manipulators figure it out before they are driven, in desperation, like one of their number, to leap bare-assed off a multi-million dollar yacht into the roiling sea of a cold and merciless dawn?
You tell me. All I know is that every so often we have to save capitalism from being destroyed by the very people who benefit from it the most.
