Tax increases are still off the table as unemployment and the gap between rich and poor continues to grow in the U.S.
As a result of the fortuitous confluence of sabbatical and research that requires me to search through archives in New York, I’m in the envious position of spending the next six months in Greenwich Village. Ten years after 9-11 and almost three years since the financial meltdown, the city is a curious study in contrasts. Increasingly, Manhattan is a real-life theme park for the wealthy – either for those who live here or for the millions who populate the tour buses and can afford to visit, catered to by a billionaire septuagenarian mayor on the verge of retirement, and serviced by an often racially or ethnically determined underclass that is vulnerable to the vicissitudes of insecure, low-wage, and often illegal employment.
It’s not exactly fashionable to speak in terms of class in the United States – after all, this is the land of opportunity, Horatio Alger mythology, a cult of celebrity, and hyper-individualism – yet it’s hard to think of a more appropriate label with which to describe the current economic woes as they hit a large swath of the population personally and deeply. If you include the marginally employed or those who have given up looking, nearly one-sixth of Americans are out of work.
My spouse and I recently attended a Broadway production of The Normal Heart – Larry Kramer’s searing drama of the early days of the AIDS crisis in New York. Afterward, reflecting on the struggle for gay and lesbian rights, my spouse turned to me and said, “What will be the next civil-rights struggle in the U.S.?” Without pausing, but inwardly flinching, I offered, “What about an old one? What about the rights of the working class?”
Against this economic backdrop, the current debt-ceiling negotiations have a certain air of unreality. Republicans are trapped in an illogical ideology that supports the biggest sources of expenditures (such as the two foreign wars that have sucked the Treasury dry) but that refuses to close loopholes that amount to corporate subsidization and capital flight to sunnier climes, let alone to consider increasing revenue through taxation. The Democrats gamely refuse to put social programs on the table, but are increasingly held hostage to President Barack Obama’s proposals to cut Medicaid, specifically, and government expenditures, generally. One expects some kind of dithering-while-Rome-burns compromise, if only because a debt default is around the corner and nobody wants that. Whatever is agreed to will be little more than a Band-Aid on a gaping wound.
I have a simple solution to the crisis, which is blindingly obvious, actually: Convince Americans to increase their taxes. Not just a bit, but a lot – up to the Canadian and European social market economy levels. Stop arguing about the value of big versus small government, and instead use whatever bully pulpits exist to talk about getting the government and the services you pay for – a government that works, provides for the infirm, educates for the future, and is willing to pay what it really costs to be the leader of the “Free World.”
I know a lot of “Liberals” in the U.S. – this city is chock full of them – but when I make this radical proposal, I generally get blank stares. People tend to have a sort of a “this-does-not-compute” reaction, even while they’re bemoaning the lack of universal health care and the insane cost of post-secondary education, which pretty much amounts to a mortgage per kid. (The funny thing about being a Canadian in the United States is that you suddenly seem left-wing, almost regardless of where you position yourself on the political spectrum back home.)
Of course, my modest proposal isn’t taken seriously, and I have one small theory as to why. American political culture is largely bereft of the ethical level of social solidarity that is required to sustain tax hikes or provide health care for all. Put simply, you cannot convince wealthy Americans (using Obama’s arbitrary definition of the “rich” –households that earn over half a million or more per year) to take a significant hit in order to help others. Sure, there’s a great tradition of philanthropy in this country, but that’s because when the rich decide to be generous, both singularly and collectively, it’s their idea to give their money away, and to whom or what they want to, and not the state requiring them to part with it.
I’m serious about the “ethical” part, too. Whether you define ethics in a consequentialist manner (in terms of the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people), or take a deontological approach (which suggests that helping those who are less fortunate is the right thing to do for the right set of reasons), there’s no significant political will, nor public demand, to redress the sorry lack of ethics in the United States. We’re talking about a country where government spending is perceived as a disease rather than as an institutional necessity for a healthy democracy.
Meanwhile, the chance of the U.S. holding a public debate on the issue of raising taxes is virtually nil. Rather than confront the fact that bank foreclosure, personal bankruptcy, and even homelessness are things that an unfortunate number of Americans have faced since 2008, it’s easier and much more entertaining for Americans to imagine that, like in the summer blockbuster Larry Crowne, if they lose their jobs they’ll just go back to college and fall in love with someone who looks like Julia Roberts. But the happily-ever-after ending dies hard here – however divorced it may be from the lived experience of many.
Origin
Source: the Mark
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