HOLD BUSH AND CHENEY ACCOUNTABLE


REAGAN: SOCIALIST FOR THE RICH


From its inception the United States has had inequality. The well-to-do find rationalizations for why they deserve everything and no one else deserves anything. I've been reading a little of Arthur Schlesinger's book The Age of Jackson. Back in the 1830's the debate raged about inequality. Amos Kendall, a supporter of President Jackson, observed: "In all civilized as well as barbarous countries a few rich and intelligent men have built up nobility systems; by which, under some name, and by some contrivance, the few are enabled to live upon the labor of the many." In 1980 Ronald Reagan was elected. He was a great believer in "nobility systems" and orchestrated a massive transfer of wealth from the middle and working class to the very rich. This commentary by Ravi Batra is at www.truthout.org:

Let's go back to the early 1980's. In 1981, Reagan signed a law that sharply reduced the income tax for the wealthiest Americans and corporations. The president asserted his program would create jobs, purge inflation and, get this, trim the budget deficit. However, following the tax cut, the deficit soared from 2.5 percent of GDP to over 6 percent, alarming financial markets, sending interest rates sky high, and culminating in the worst recession since the 1930's.

Soon the president realized he needed new revenues to trim the deficit, bring down interest rates and improve his chances for reelection. He would not rescind the income tax cut, but other taxes were acceptable. In 1982, taxes were raised on gasoline and cigarettes, but the deficit hardly budged. In 1983, the president signed the biggest tax rise on payrolls, promising to create a surplus in the Social Security system, while knowing all along that the new revenue would be used to finance the deficit.

The retirement system was looted from the first day the Social Security surplus came into being, because the legislation itself gave the president a free hand to spend the surplus in any way he liked. Thus began a massive transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class, especially the self-employed small businessman, to the wealthy. The self-employment tax jumped as much as 66 percent.