Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

Welfare for the rich by a different name

Ted Folkert

March 11, 2015

Here we go again. Now in the Republican effort to “do it to us one more time”, some of their would-be saviors of mankind, their self-drafted candidates for president, are concerned about income inequality. Of course, they want to solve it like they want to solve everything they see wrong with government, by reducing taxes on the rich, the “job creators” as they call their donors, and reducing social programs which help to reduce the impact of income inequality on the poor and struggling members of the proletariat class of society.

Thomas Piketty, the French author of “Capital in the Twentieth Century”, is quite skeptical of the feigned and misleading attempt of Jeb Shrub to take the case of the disadvantaged. Piketty’s viewpoint: “If we want to have more growth in the future and more equitable growth in the future, we need to put more resources in the education available to the bottom 50 percent or bottom 80 percent of America. So it’s not enough to just say it, as Jeb Bush seems to be saying, but you need to act on it, and for this you need to invest resources.”

So, when do we get Jeb Shrub’s plan to cure this serious problem for our economy and those who are on the receiving end of the inequality? Will his plan call for more government resources for education for the lower 50% to 80% of the income earners? Will his plan call for promoting and staffing public schools or building more and better schools? Will his plan call for encouraging more of our bright young people to pursue degrees in education? Will it call for monetary advantage for those who would seek degrees in education? Will it call for taxing Wall Street’s humongous income and ostentatious wealth in order to finance better education for those who need and desire it? Will it call for diverting a chunk of our pathetically huge defense budget to preschool, elementary, middle, and higher education? Will it call for taxing all political contributions by 50% to be used to support education?

Will his answer include any of these possible benefits to support education, the most important and crucial need for the future success of our economy? Or will it just be the same old game of robbing Peter to pay Paul? Of course, accusing the Republicans of robbing Peter to pay Paul is actually being kind. That cliché merely refers to taking money from one to pay another. What the Republicans desire is worse. It is robbing the poor, who need their money, to pay the rich, who don’t need more money – a policy which certainly has been well used since civilization began and which still goes on unfettered and unresolved year after year. It not only goes on these days but continues to get worse at a geometric rate – not simple arithmetic, but geometric proportions.

Thomas Piketty made the essentials of a healthy and sustainable economy clear in his well-researched and documented book. He recommends taxing capital, (which one might define as that portion of the total wealth of the nation accumulated by virtue of the infrastructure of defense, education, transportation, and our legal system – or by advantage, or luck, or by whatever means it was created) – and paying the national debt. Once that is done it seems that our taxation will be able to provide substantial funds to support education of all classes of income and wealth for the benefit of all – for the common good.

Any candidate who does not support funding a substantial investment in educational opportunities should not be given serious consideration to lead our country. Our practice of allowing the rich and powerful and behemoth corporations to continue taking a bigger bite of the food we provide must end if we want to prosper in the future. Like Jim Hightower says: “money is like manure, it needs to be spread around if it is going to fertilize anything.”

Here is a perfect example of how much our behemoth corporations think of this country which provides a free society with the best military in the world and a huge market for their goods and services. Figures from Bloomberg Businessweek tell us that currently our big corporations owe us in taxes on their worldwide income, as follows: Microsoft – $30 billion, Apple – $23 billion, Oracle – $12 billion, Citigroup – $12 billion, Amgen – $11 billion, Qualcomm – $9 billion, JP Morgan Chase – $7 billion, Goldman Sachs – $5 billion, Bank of America – $5 billion. That totals to $114 billion. This money is just sitting in foreign countries because they must pay the taxes if they bring it home. That would surely build some schools and educate some new teachers. I’ll bet that if you read the “About Us” section of these corporations’ websites you won’t find any mention of this, only talk about how successful they are and how benevolent and dedicated they are for our success.

So much for the common good.

Think about it!