THE WORLD IN DISORDER -- ANOTHER EXCHANGE

THE WORLD IN DISORDER – ANOTHER EXCHANGE

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© September 14, 2014

A READER WRITES:

Please explain to Klaus that the liberals in the United States are not delusional and don’t wish to “take money away” from the rich (to redistribute).  We simply want the uber-rich (all 2- 3,000 families) to pay their fair share… since examination shows they don’t. 

In 1918, US top tax increased to 77% (for over one million dollars) to finance WWI; was reduced to 58% in ’22; to 25% in ’25; to 24% in ’29.  In ’32, top marginal tax rates to 63% during Great Depression & increased thereafter: 1954- 1951 to 91%, to 92% in ‘52/’53; 91% ’54- ’63; ‘64’s top to 77%  and to 70% 1965- ’81; to 50%, 1982-’86;  for ’87   to 38.5% for individuals;  to 33% 1988-1990; 31%  ’91-’92.  In ’93 39.6 thru 2000. 35% 2003-201?

No wonder we now have inadequate revenue!  Corporations once paid @ 2/3 of all U.S. taxes; NOW, < 9%; and many pay zero!  This has a cumulative effect!

Read Johnston’s “Perfectly Legal” to see how our tax codes stack the deck. 

Read Nick Hanauer’s op-ed “They’re Coming to Get Us Plutocrats with Pitchforks,” where he (a billionaire) makes the case that TAKING CARE OF PEOPLE (i.e., this country’s middle-class ‘engine’) will enhance our economy. 

The liberal objective isn’t economic equality, just equal opportunity.  Today, someone earning a $60,000 salary pays a larger percentage of his income in taxes than the 400 richest Americans.  And that’s just wrong.

Liberals want to protect worker rights & benefits, aid the less fortunate, seek solutions to society’s problems and try to leave the world a better place for future generations.  That’s a liberal. -  We need more liberals.

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Your statistic are, I’m sure, accurate as America’s tax code has been a boondoggle from the first with politicians using it to grease the skids to ensure their elections.

The insanity of the tax code has been indigenous to our reactive instincts as a people which has been duly projected into those we see fit to elect, be the party Democrats or Republicans, Liberals or Conservatives, or indeed, independents. 

When it comes to money, to finances, we have never been an inspiring people.  If you have your doubts, check our history from the beginning.

Your statistics are corroborated by a number of sources:

Federal Reserve Board shows economic improvement from 1989 to 2013 has been steady for the top 3 percent, flat for the next 7 percent, and declining for the bottom 90 percent with nearly 20 percent gap between the 3-7 per centers.

Psychologist Ed Benner shows nearly a perpendicular curve wealth and the number of friends on Facebook, whereas beat writer Christopher Ingraham shows that social segregation is still a fact in 2014: “All my black friends have a bunch of white friends.  And all my white friends have one black friend.”

Tampa Times columnist Jeff Harrington shows how far middle class workers on the lower rungs are falling behind: the lowest 25 percent making less than $20,000 a year show virtually no improvement.  The next 25 percent making $30,000 but less than $40,000 show a sharp dip to less than $20,000 in 1990, but recovered to normal earnings level but with no improvement.  The next highest 25 percent increased to $40,000 but were unable to rise above that level.  The highest 25 percent rose from $60,000 to about $85,000 in 2000, then leveled off at $90,000 to the present.

Popular myth has the median household income in the US at $75,000.  The Economic Policy Board shows it is $53,890 in 2014.  For most earners, wages aren’t keeping pace with inflation dropping as much as 2.7 to 4.2 percent in actual spendable income.

Meanwhile, there is some encouraging news.  Real and projected spending per Medicare recipient in 2014 dollars show a leveling off and far below those projected over the next ten years.

It may seem this is an open declaration in support of your thesis when clearly it is not.  If you read me, and I know you do, you know the key to me is education because education develops balance as well as opportunity, tolerance of diverse social groups not of one’s own as well as less inclination to buy the fear rhetoric that spills out of the mouths of politicians and demagogues. 

Education also develops self-reliance, encourages self-direction as well as self-acceptance, which spells confidence.  I have a book soon to come out called CONFIDENT THINKING, which develops a strategy to complement formal education, not to replace it.

We will always have the “uber-riche” as you put it.  In the long history of man, the formula has never been broken, not even in these United States, of the top ten percent controlling the majority of the assets in land, water and mineral rights, as well as political clout.

In ancient history, it was the conquerors, the church than the emperors and monarchs in the feudal age, then the mercantile capitalists, totalitarian rulers, and then politicians-industrialists-bankers into our present day.

The only way we of the working middle class have had an opportunity to be invited to the party is to have some value added skill that the “Robber Barons” needed to exercise their collective wills.  That value added opportunity came with education, and with education, people such as Klaus and myself have had access to a very comfortable life.  Klaus is an immigrant with a passionate belief in America as he could see him having no similar opportunity in Germany.  He, like myself, worked hard against considerable odds to get that education.

He doesn’t see himself as exceptional, but sees no reason to give handouts to people that spurn free public education, as many poor whites and blacks do, and then turn around and say it is society’s fault. 

I grew up in a poor white family with my mother pounding into my head that the only way I would go anywhere is if I took full advantage of the privilege, yes privilege of a free public education, and studied hard enough to get scholarships to higher education, which I did.  I may not be as exercised as Klaus, but I know where he is coming from.

Francis Fukuyama writes a powerful article in the September/October 2014 issue of FOREIGN AFFAIRS titled “America in Decay: The Sources of Political Dysfunction.”  He writes of the anachronism of our interior secular structures.  I write of the anachronism of the anachronism of our interior social psychological structures.

I write in one of my books: To attempt to do for others what they best do for themselves is to weaken their resolve and diminish them as persons.  The same holds true of ourselves (MEET YOUR NEW BEST FRIEND, 2014).

Author-philosopher Charles D. Hayes, totally self-educated, has written widely on education, saying “Education is not something you get; education is something you take.”

We are not all as motivated as this author is “to take” an education, and since credentials still rule the day, it is pragmatic to get an education.  A strange thing has happened, however, and that is that children are likely to be less educated than their parents with all the concomitant consequences.

According the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, of the 23 countries survey, the United States is fourth from the bottom with barely 30 percent of US adults having achieved a higher level of education than their parents did.  Even more bleaker as education bottom feeders, only 1 in 20 Americans ages 25-34 from parents who did not receive a high school education have graduated from college. 

Compare this to the 20 richest countries in the OECD survey where it is one in four.

The gap between high school and college graduates in annual earnings between 1979 and 2012 was $30,000 after inflation.  This is only likely to widen with time putting more people on the dole, more people criticizing the super rich, whose children are close to unanimous in attaining education levels equal to or exceeding their parents. 

My point is that badgering the rich for not paying their fair share is academic.  The rich still pay most of the tax revenue collected by the Internal Revenue Service in Washington.  That, too, has always been true. 

*     *     *

For Your Information (Eduardo Porter, OECD statistics, New York Times, September 14, 2014):

Educational attainment of children that is greater than that attained by their parents varies from nearly 60 percent at the top to just over 20 percent at the bottom:

TOP: Russia, Korea, Finland, Belgium, France, Ireland, Poland, Netherlands, Canada, Estonia, Sweden, Australia, Spain, Britain, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Slovak Republic, UNITED STATES, Austria, Germany, Czech Republic: BOTTOM.