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Taxing the Rich Won't Help the Poor
Reacting to and attempting to co-opt the Occupy Wall Street movement, President Obama used his 2012 State of the Union address to discuss what he now calls "the defining issue of our time"--the growing gap between rich and poor.
"We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by," Obama said. "Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules."
No doubt, the long-term trend toward income inequality is a major flaw of the capitalist system. From 1980 to 2005 more than 80 percent in the gain in Americans' incomes went to the top one percent. This staggering disparity between the haves and have-nots has created a permanent underclass of underemployed, undereducated and alienated people who often turn to crime for survival and social status. Aggregation of wealth into fewer hands has shrunk the size of the U.S. market for consumer goods, prolonging and deepening the depression.
How can we make the system fairer?
Liberals are calling for a more progressive income tax: i.e., raise taxes on the rich. Obama says he'd like to slap a minimum federal income tax of 30 percent on individuals earning more than $1 million a year.
Soaking the rich would obviously be fair. GOP frontrunner/corporate layoff sleazebag Mitt Romney earned $59,500 a day in 2010--and paid half the effective tax rate (13.9 percent) than of a family of four earning $59,500 a year.
Fair, sure. But would it work? Would increasing taxes on the wealthy do much to close the gap between rich and poor--to level the economic playing field?
Probably not.
From FDR through Jimmy Carter it was an article of faith among liberals that higher taxes on the rich would result in lower taxes on the poor and working class. This was because the Republican Party consistently pushed for a balanced budget. Tax income was tied to expenditures, which were more or less fixed--and thus a zero-sum game.
That period from 1933 to 1980 was also the era of the New Deal, Fair Deal and Great Society social and anti-poverty programs, such as Social Security, the G.I. Bill, college grants and welfare. These government handouts helped mitigate hard times, gave life-changing educational opportunities that allowed class mobility, closing the gap between despair and hope for tens of millions of Americans. As the list of social programs grew, so did the tax rate--mostly on the rich. The practical effect was to redistribute income from top to bottom.
Democrats think it still works that way. It doesn't.
The political landscape has shifted dramatically under Reagan, Clinton and the two Bushes. Budget cuts slashed spending on student financial aid, food stamps, Medicaid, school lunch programs, veterans hospitals, and aid to single mothers. The social safety net is shredded. Most federal tax dollars flow directly into the Pentagon and defense contractors such as Halliburton.
As the economy continues to tank, there's only category to cut: social programs. "Eugene Steuerle worked on tax and budget issues in the Reagan Treasury Department and is now with the Urban Institute," NPR reported a year ago. "He says one reason no one talks about preserving the social safety net today is that lawmakers have given themselves little choice but to cut it. They've taken taxes and entitlements, such as Social Security and Medicare, off the budget-cutting table, so there's not much left."
Meanwhile, effective tax rates on the wealthy have been greatly reduced. Which isn't fair--but not in the way you might think.
Taxes on middle-class families are at their lowest level in 50 years, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal thinktank.
What's going on?
On the revenue side of the budget equation, the poor and middle-class have received tiny tax cuts. The rich and super rich have gotten huge tax cuts. Everyone is paying less.
On the expense side, social programs have been pretty much destroyed. If you grow up poor there's no way to attend college without going into debt. If you lose your job you'll get 99 weeks of tiny, taxable (thanks to Reagan) unemployment checks before burning through your savings and winding up on the street.
Military spending, on the other hand, has soared, accounting for 54 percent of federal spending.You have to rebuild the safety net. Otherwise higher taxes will swirl down the Pentagon's $800 toilets
In short, we're running up massive deficits in order to finance wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on, and so rich job-killers can pay the lowest tax rates in the developed world.
I'm all for higher taxes on the rich. I'm for abolishing the right to be wealthy. But liberals who think progressive taxation will mitigate or reverse income inequality are trapped in the 1960s, fighting the last (budget) war in a reality that no longer exists. The U.S. government's top priority is invading Muslim countries and bombing their citizens. Without big social programs, invading Muslim countries and bombing their citizens is exactly where every extra taxdollar collected from the likes of Mitt Romney would go.
The only way progressive taxation can address income inequality is if higher taxes on the rich are coupled with an array of new anti-poverty and other social programs designed to put money and new job skills directly into the pockets of the 99 percent of Americans who have seen no improvement in their lives since 1980.
You have to rebuild the safety net. Otherwise higher taxes will swirl down the Pentagon's $800 toilets.
If you're serious about inequality, income redistribution through the tax system is only a start. Whether through stronger unions or worker advocacy through federal agencies, government must require higher minimum wages. Maximum wages, too. A nation that allows its richest citizen to earn ten times more than its poorest would still be horribly unfair--yet it would be a big improvement over today. Shipping jobs overseas must be banned. Most free trade agreements should be torn up. Companies must no longer be allowed to layoff employees before eliminating salaries and benefits for their top-paid managers--CEOs, etc.
And a layoff should mean just that--a layoff. First fired should be first rehired--at equal or greater pay--if and when business improves.
Once a battery of spending programs targeted to the 99 percent is in place--permanent unemployment benefits, subsidized public housing, full college grants, etc.--the tax code ought to be radically revamped. For example, nothing gives the lie to the myth of America as a land of equal opportunity than inheritance. Aristocratic societies pass wealth and status from generation to generation. In a democracy, no one has the right to be born into wealth.
Because everyone deserves an equal chance, the national inheritance tax should be 100 percent. While we're at it, why should people who inherited wealth but have low incomes get off scot-free? Slap the bastards with a European-style tax on wealth as well as the appearance of wealth.
Now you're probably laughing. Even Obama's lame call for taxing the rich--so the U.S. can buy more drone planes--stands no chance of passing the Republican Congress. They're empty words meant for election-year consumption. Taking income inequality seriously? That's so off the table it isn't even funny.
Which is why we shouldn't be looking to corporate machine politicians like Obama for answers.
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84 Comments so far
Show AllGreat article! Ted Rall is a man after me own heart.
Some will object that he's impractical. I think the current system is what's impractical. Let's scrap it!
Ted and nearly every other left of center author oversimplify the issue by making tax policy the sole determinate of wealth distribution during the 1935-1985 era that Ted alludes to.
FDR's New Deal financial industry regulations were more about the structure of the industry than about taxes. The result was a financial industry that played a supporting role for the main street economy...exactly what the 99% need a financial industry to do. Financial industry employees' annual incomes were not much different than their counterparts in other industries because the fraudulent activities that produced astronomical profits from 1990 to pesent were illegal.
As deregulation made more fradulent activities legal during the past 25 years, employees in the financial industry reached the point that their ANNUAL incomes exceeded the LIFETIME incomes of their counterparts in other industries, enabling them to buy enough politicians to legislate in favor of the 1% and against the 99%.
It really is that simple.
Changing tax policy without first restoring New Deal structural regulations will not solve any problems.
The system does have to change as far as WHERE the tax money goes, or taxing the rich won't help. But we do have to change the taxing system and we must make the rich, the Mitt Romney's of the world, pay a good bit more. Asa long as he makes $59,000 a day and pays the same-or less- in taxes than you and I do, something MUST change, period. Don't give the rich like Romney any leverage, Ted, they already are screwing the rest of us pretty good as is !!
Ronny Raygun's 1986 "tax reform" lauded by Dims and the GOP further slanted the taxing field by taxing unemployment insurance benefits for the first time, eliminating charitable contribution deductions except for businesses and itemizers, adding 63 sections that penalize married filers, reducing corproate tax rates and other regressive changes.
Obama keeps promoting "tax reform in the spirit of the 1986 reform" which in Obamaspeak means further reducing corporate taxes for companies like Boeing and GE that have paid no taxes on billions of dollars in profits during the past decade.
The leveler is death.
That doesn't mean taxing the rich shouldn't happen. The goal should be to both direct the spending to the right places and increase input from the source of revenue which would be higher taxes on the rich.
"I'm for abolishing the right to be wealthy."
I sure appreciate reading these words.
I love Obama's quote concerning restoring the economy.
Everyone (he means you and me) does their fair share (work),
while playing by the same rules, gets ....
a fair shot.
Not your fair share for your effort, just a shot.
Decent article. "We shouldn't be looking to corporate machine politicians like Obama for answers." I would expand that to say that we should not be looking to any elected politicians for answers.
Rall says that the president is "reacting to and attempting to co-opt the Occupy Wall Street movement." This is all we should ever expect from elected politicians - at best. Reacting to and attempting to co-opt all working class movements fighting for social and political change is the only thing that politicians ever could, or would do. That could be thought of as the job description. That does not mean that we should be satisfied with that. Rather, it means we should look elsewhere.
Rall says "the long-term trend toward income inequality is a major flaw of the capitalist system." It is not a major flaw of the capitalist system, rather it is the purpose of the capitalist system.
Obama's reaction to OWS was to 1) enact three more NAFTAs to assure that the unemployed OWS participants would never get a job, and 2) to enact his National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that denies due process to OWS participants and allows Obama's goons to "indefinitely detain" them.
Those actions go way beyond "co-opting OWS".
I am not defending Obama.
Claiming that 54% of the Federal Budget is on military spending is pretty controversial and an essay in itself. The Federal Government's own figure is 20% (which is frankly already staggering and bankrupting enough compared to other nations) - you can add 7% for veterans - and no doubt you can argue that previous overspends that add to the debt repayment bill should also be taken into account - but 54% would then suggest that only 46% is left for other expenditures and this simply doesn't make much mathematical sense with any pie chart you try to create. Can an economist please tell me in terms that say PBS and BBC would accept and promote, what the real federal budget on military expenditure is? The best way to win an argument is to start with facts that aren't controversial and aren't likely to undermine your case at the first fence...
The total war-related budget is not at all controversial, and has been tracked for years by the National Priorities Project. If you add to the overt defense department allocation and the supplemental war appropriations, the covert CIA budget, the VA expenditures, the portion of the Energy (and other) Department budget that is directed toward weapons systems, and the portion of the national debt due to past war costs - Ted Rall's number is low. The actual portion for the FY2011 budget is 58%, and it's hovered around 50% since the Vietnam War.
http://nationalpriorities.org/en/resources/federal-budget-101/charts/discretionary-spending/discretionary-budget-fy2011/
Just seconding that - we're easily in excess of 50% every year. The biggest trick used to fool people into thinking otherwise is omitting what the previous years' debt was spent upon.
Can anyone imagine a family being in $100,000 of credit card debt mostly because one family member buys $10,000 worth of porn per year, and then claiming that the porn budget is just $10K, but the "big" problem is this $90K debt from "various spending" from previous years...
Well duh: increasing taxes on the rich will not, in itself, effect the kind of change we need. But it is an essential first step toward restoring a more just society (just ask the Finns, the Swedes, and the Danes). Without it the management of our government simply becomes a game of who can slash the spending for which programs the fastest to reduce federal budget deficits.
The writer's points seem pretty muddled. Yes, we all know we have a bloated and wasteful military, and a miserly and inadequate system for funding higher education and public infrastructure. Tell us something we don't know.
But what I really got a kick out of was Ken's comment that he is for "abolishing the right to be wealthy". Huh? That sounds a little draconian -- especially when "wealthy" is in the eye of the beholder. Nearly half the people on this planet live on less than $3 a day. Having lived in the Third World myself, I know this puts around 90% of the people posting on Common Dreams in the solidly "wealthy" camp in their eyes. Be careful what you wish for.
Yes, wealth is quite relative. But there's nothing looney about the idea of abolishing the right to a generational aristocracy in America. It was first proposed by Thomas Paine, the instigator of the American Revolution, in his final pamphlet Agrarian Justice.
In it, he stated that all wealth comes from the exclusive use of the commons (land and resources) to which we are all due "rent", and is made possible by the institutions and protections of society and government to which are due a repayment.
Paine proposed an inheritance tax that would be redistributed as a one-time stipend to all young men when they reached the age of 21, and as an annual stipend to the elderly, the blind and the lame. In other words, he proposed a "death tax" to pay for a national social security and medicare system as well as to help people get started in life. He is, in fact, recognized by the Social Security Administration as being its philosophical inspiration.
Ted Rall adopts a gadfly approach here. Of course he is right-- re-taxing the rich at previous rates (they used to be taxed at higher rates, after all) won't improve the lot of the lower 99% of the population, unless we rearrange our priorities and slash military spending.
Is this something that should astound us? We know this already-- at least I hope we do.
A resounding "DUH"
The first and most urgent GOAL, in my opinion, is to THOROUGHLY INVESTIGATE, INDICT, PROSECUTE, FINE and IMPRISON...THE CRIMINALS!!!
If and only if THAT happens, can any of us go about restoring some semblance of law and order, basic civility, a measure of justice.
The fact of the matter is that, as it stands, the U.S. Department of Justice, along with any and all other law enforcement agencies, do absolutely NOTHING; In fact, the habitual, serial Felons, the criminals, get FULL Pardons, Full ASYLUM, right here in America; None are ever investigated, indicted, prosecuted or punished. In fact, each of them are ABOVE ALL LAWS.
And Just Remember: It was President Obama that clearly stated that he would not get involved in prosecutions of these (war crimes and financial terrorism) crimes; He said, "I want to look forward, not go backward."
Well, I say to him, I want to move forward by upholding both the U.S. laws and the world's laws. If we continue to totally ignore SERIOUS CONSTANT crimes and the criminals walk away scott-free every time, it only gives both the criminals and the would-be criminals license to behave as if they're above the law. And that is exactly how they conduct themselves. Indeed this is a travesty...
And a Letter to the President:
Dear Mr. President,
Thank you for the speech last night; I was glad that you were brave enough to mention your demands of a vigorous and thorough investigation of the mass and Intentional Fraud perpetrated by the Banks, by the Federal Reserve, and by those "Financiers" on Wall Street. These highly-orchestrated financial CRIMES by those criminals who willfully conducted them, are indeed very serious and, in fact, are directly responsible for this ENTIRE Economic Fiasco.
I, along with countless others, want to urge you, with the most emphatic fortitude possible, to thoroughly investigate ALL involved, to a man, in this totally and willfully collaborated gigantic Scheme to Defraud the very citizens of this, our country, the United States.
But don't stop there!! Each one of the Criminals must then be Indicted, Prosecuted to the fullest extent of THE NEW LAWS, (all of which will be made retroactive) and, finally, actually PUNISHED SEVERELY; Let me be perfectly clear: Each Criminal that is found Guilty in the Courts of Law, whether by a judicious Judge or by a Jury of his/her "peers," shall be held fully accountable for their CRIMES, and penalties will surely entail STIFF terms of imprisonment, along with the lawful SEIZURE of ALL ill-gotten gains.
We all know, for example, that Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, Richard Fuld, Hank Paulson, Timothy Geithner, Alan Greenspan, and an astonishingly dizzying and countless number of all the other CRIMINALS, should be on the TOP of your list for these vigorous investigations. We MUST HOLD each of these Serial PREDATORS/Offenders FULLY ACCOUNTABLE. ALL those who were and still are engaged in these Enormous Crimes of Fraud, Scheme to DeFraud, Elder Abuse, and countless other very serious Felonies, MUST PAY FOR THEIR CRIMES!!!!
Thank you. We will ALL hold your feet to the fire on this issue specifically. PLEASE do NOT let us down!!!
Sincerely,
We have to prosecute the criminals, not for revenge, or to instill fears, but to deflect the considerable portion of propaganda that is masking the culpability of people. The prosecution of the criminals will remind the people that there are specific individuals out there plotting and planning to manipulate the public, and lead them astray. The cogs in the machine do not direct themselves. Their actions that destroy the society are devised by those ones we are going to prosecute. Failing to prosecute them leaves the whole process hidden, out of sight, out of mind. Leaving the people helpless. We're not tolerating that any longer. The people will know the true causes, the real instigators, their intents, their agendas, their numbers.
High tax on extreem income (say 90% on the third million and up) accomplishes one important function: It makes those kinds of saleries/bonuses/stock options/whatever finagled tax dodge have you futile. Now all of a suden there is more money to run the companys, pay wages, pensions, etc.. Also less cash for speculation in the Wall Street Casino, real estate and other inflationary activity.
It's not just what can be done with the revenue. It is keeping a lid on the guys in the executive suites. And let's be real, these guys will work just as hard for $3,000,000 as $30,000,000. And if they won't they can be out-sourced. Right?
In addition to what you've proposed here, there's also this approach- Limiting the max compensation for CEO, CFO Corp Execs, etc. Trying to do so directly [IE: CEO's can only earn a max of say 1, 2 or 3 million$] might not be do-able - but then there's this tactic- making max CEO compensation = to say 50Xs the minimum wage or 40Xs the salary of a Corp's least paid employees &/or average workers pay [about what it was in the 1950s-60s & 70s- now many / most CEO's pay = 350Xs - 700Xs that of the average worker]. Thus you incentivize raising. rather than effectively lowering, the minimum wage & average pay-scale- because if a CEO, CFO , etc insists on cutting average workers- pay they would have to also cut their pay by the same %.
And there's taxing transactions on Wall St Bankster type speculation, truly investigating & prosecuting Bankster fraud, Re-installing Glass-Steagal, Tearing up GATT, NAFTA, CAFTA, the WTO, etc -&- stop Gov't incentiving Corps shipping of jobs over-seas. And last but not least reign in the empire & military industrial intel security complex [the MIISC]- IE: Cut MIISC spending by 25% - 50% - which would still be more than what both China & Russia spends combined [& you could probably add the UK & France IE: a 25% -50% cut in MIISC spending would likely = or be more than all other members of the Security Council combined]- Currently MIISC spending = more than what the rest of the whole World spends combined.
See Above Comment
Ted is simplistically correct that increasing tax revenues from the wealthy, by itself, will not reduce the burden on the working class. But in this climate of budget deficit hawks and no net increase in revenues, a revenue-neutral top bracket increase would have to be balanced by an equivalent reduction in the lower brackets, with perhaps a guaranteed minimum income at the bottom.
From 1917 through 1986, with the exception of the seven years that led to the Great Depression, the top US tax bracket was at 50% or higher (as much as 94% during WWII), and at 91% to 92% from 1950 through 1963, when America saw the emergence of a large middle class and the most equitable wealth distribution in our history. From 1964 through 1980, and the catastrophic election of Ronald Reagan (the shill for corporate America), the top rate was 70% or better. It's all been downhill since then.
Excellent points! You saved me a lot of time and effort.
As long as the rich, the corporations are able to donate as much money as they wish to influence the American political system, nothing will change. When even the Libertarian Party praises "Citizens United", it becomes obvious "where" the problem is today. A "SuperPAC" can dump a hundred million dollars on a political candidate, effectively "drowning out" the voices of a million ordinary Americans. And voting becomes meaningless when such political corruption effectively eliminates any possibility of change short of massive violence. I'm reading Ted Rall's book "The Anti-American Manifesto" and I think he's really "seen the elephant"...
Change You Can Believe In?
Wall Street Owns The Country
A Speech by Mary Elizabeth Lease (circa 1890)
This is a nation of inconsistencies. The Puritans fleeing from oppression became oppressors. We fought England for our liberty and put chains on four million of blacks. We wiped out slavery and our tariff laws and national banks began a system of white wage slavery worse than the first. Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. The West and South are bound and prostrate before the manufacturing East. Money rules, and our Vice-President is a London banker. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The [political] parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us. We were told two years ago to go to work and raise a big crop, that was all we needed. We went to work and plowed and planted; the rains fell, the sun shone, nature smiled, and we raised the big crop that they told us to; and what came of it? Eight-cent corn, ten-cent oats, two-cent beef and no price at all for butter and eggs-that's what came of it. The politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children, so statistics tell us, starve to death every year in the United States, and over 100,000 shopgirls in New York are forced to sell their virtue for the bread their niggardly wages deny them... We want money, land and transportation. We want the abolition of the National Banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the government. We want the foreclosure system wiped out... We will stand by our homes and stay by our fireside by force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the government pays its debts to us. The people are at bay; let the bloodhounds of money who dogged us thus far beware.
The Author
"These government handouts helped mitigate hard times, gave life-changing educational opportunities that allowed class mobility, closing the gap between despair and hope for tens of millions of Americans".
These programs were handouts? You give yourself away way too early, my friend. The rest of it becomes hard to believe. This type of spin will be around the rest of the way,
Instead of government redistributing wealth, we could be thinking about capping it by yearly referendum so it would redistribute itself.
I disagree with Ted's major premise. Restoring truly progressive tax rates would have one effect that isn't mentioned much: it would reverse the trend of the past 30 years wherein the 1/10 of 1% uses their excess wealth to buy politicians and turn the US government into a money machine to give them even more. Moreover, reducing inequality is essential to bring back the communitarian spirit that enables people in the middle to empathize with the poor and support social programs.
In this vein, we should be asking what, exactly, is the policy rationale for taxing the income people earn by the sweat of their brows at nearly twice the rate of capital gain income that is passively generated by investments.
I do agree that the estate tax should be strengthened -- it doesn't have to be 100% but there needs to be a recognition that there is no right to pass vast amounts of wealth to succeeding generations. Inherited wealth is nothing more than affirmative action for the rich -- and anyone who believes people should work for their money, rather than get a handout, should stand with Buffett and Gates and support the estate tax.
There is a simple truth...Labor creates capital and is, in truth, superior to Capital. Labor places the human as the central concern in the transactions of life, Capitalism seeks to subject labor to create wealth and it ain't no fair exchange. So it comes to this and will take some doing to undo.
Too simple.
You mean like your two word retort?
Yes.
How is it "too simple?" What would be the problem if it were "too simple?"
Is "allele frequency changes over time" too simple? Creationists think so.
Is "for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction" too simple?
There is no serious or meaningful controversy about this statement: "Labor is the source of all wealth." Nor is it in any dispute that those performing the labor for the most part do not enjoy the full rewards of that labor. Do you dispute either of those? It is also easy to see - self-evident, really and strongly supported by all evidence - that there are a relative few who enjoy the rewards of the labor of others. "Labor precedes capital, and capital is a product of that labor." Can you deny that? Without labor, there would be no capital. Without capital, there would still be labor.
Where, then, do we go from there, and how is this "too simple?" Too simple for what? Too simple to deny, too simple for convenience and comfort?
Regarding this, the gem of Marx and his theories:
""Labor is the source of all wealth."
When will you men take into account that the first labors belong to the Earth Mother, as SHE has given forth all the resources taken for granted, often on the basis of exhausting aggressive contests, or will you recognize the human Mothers that give birth to, and nurture, all those who labor?
I am SO tired of the equation only being cast in these simple Marxist terms as if inequality, sexism, racism, and resource depletion didn't pre-date capitalism.
It is one thing to see the flaws in capitalism, and quite another to note the deeper causative factors behind much that passes for the abundant array of injustices we see on display today.
"Labor is the source of all wealth" is not "Marxist." David Ricardo and Adam Smith and John Locke, among others, developed the idea. It is the foundation of the study of economics. The Austrian School denies it, but not with any success.
But we need go to no more of a "Marxist" source than Abraham Lincoln:
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
All of the people cited above acknowledge that "the first labors belong to the Earth Mother, as SHE has given forth all the resources."
I agree with you that the labor and contributions of mothers, and of women in general, are devalued and dismissed. I agree with you that environmentalism needs more emphasis. (To put it mildly, in both cases.)
The Guess Who version! "''Cause taxing the rich won't get it/But circulating it might move it along." Put some Pierre back in the Elliot Trudeau. Just society! Why not!
The labor theory of value is foundational to orthodox Marxism.
That's true regardless of the fact that others held similar ideas.
This is not at all controversial.
The Labor Theory of Value was foundational to Abraham Lincoln's political life, and he never read Marx. If you have an objection to Lincoln's political thinking on this, let's hear it. It is foundational to Ricardo's and Smith's work, before Marx. If you have a rebuttal to the work of Ricardo, let's hear it.
The Labor Theory if Value is foundational to all economics, other than the Austrian School and other bought and paid for shills and disinformation agencies operating on behalf of the wealthy and powerful few.
There has been a massive propaganda effort for about 100 years to get people to embrace the ideas you are expressing here. As a result,people in the US have been trained by the propagandists for the rulers to fear and dismiss the statement "labor is the source of all wealth" in a similar manner to people being trained to fear and dismiss the statement "allele frequencies change over time" by the Creationist propagandists.
If in fact "allele frequencies change over time" the orthodox religious fundamentalist view is threatened. There is no "orthodox evolutionist" view, since evolution is not a religious belief system. The religious propagandists project that onto evolution, wanting people to believe that evolution and creationism are merely two competing belief systems They will say that evolution is "untenable" and has been "widely discarded" and is "foundational to orthodox atheism."
If in fact "labor is the source of all wealth" the orthodox capitalist doctrines are threatened. There is no "orthodox Marxism" view, since the work of Marx is not a religious belief system. We are led to believe that Marxism is a believe system, a competing belief system with the doctrine - all created from whole cloth by propagandists for the capitalists - that rationalizes and justifies Capitalism.
Why are you focusing on Marx? Marx was a Charlie-come-lately. As TA has told you several times, it was Adam Smith who first articulated it in modern times (there may have been others before him, lost to us now).
And Smith did not dismiss the natural labor that Mother Earth and non-humans perform and from which we benefit. What he said was
"Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased."
Note that he didn't identify the entity/ies from whom the purchase was made. He took it for granted that any human with good sense would recognise how much Earth provides us "for free". He even alluded in passing to how pernicious the idea is of individuals claiming to "own" pieces of Earth, but he didn't dwell on it because he felt it was past mending by then, since there was a long history of the feudal/owner class killing without let, hindrance, hesitation, or remorse to expand "their" property.
RE: I am SO tired of the equation only being cast in these simple Marxist terms as if inequality, sexism, racism, and resource depletion didn't pre-date capitalism.
What you are used to seeing as Marxist dogmas are caricatures of Marx. It happens all the time. Marx never claims that your above list only began with capitalism; he claims that they began with class-divided societies (~8 to 10,000 years ago).
When Marx says that labor is the source of all wealth he is referring to the view of the classical economists like Smith and Ricardo. In Capital Vol 1, quoting Marx, he writes "... labour is the father of material wealth, the earth is its mother." Marx never held the view that you are ascribing to him. The classical economists saw nature as a "free gift" and did not value what she provided. This remains how Bourgeois economists see the wealth of nature. This is part of the ideological justification for the rape of mother earth embraced by the capitalist system.
As bad as previous social systems were (e.g. Feudalism) no previous class society has created the levels of warfare, violence against women and people of color, combined with unimaginable levels of exploitation of global humanity and nature as has capitalism.
Capitalism is the system under which we suffer now, and to this day, NO ONE can provide a better critique and description of the laws of motion of the capitalist system than Marx and the Marxist tradition.
SR ...Excellent reply. I would have expanded on my own
"too simple" reply, but I just didn't have the time.
Hi siouxrose,
I know that you believe in evolution, both physical and "spiritual." Marxism is a theory of social evolution. I think you have an understanding of the marxian progression.. The following is a rough summary and I substitute some more modern terminology for ease of understanding.
Primitive Communism, Feudalism, Capitalism, Socialism, with a tricky bit called the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, transitioning between the last two phases. It refers to a class dictatorship, and not the dictatorship of the individual.. Marx believed that the dictatorship of the proletariat would arise after the revolution and would be a natural result of true universal sufferage,. Marx envisioned a more direct democracy unlimited by the special protections and privileges guaranteed to the Capitalists by the state under bourgeoisie republicanism.
The primitive communist stage is shrouded in the haze of pre-history, but it is certainly related to "matriarchal society" and this stage transitions with the introduction of agriculture, into the first stage of class society, feudalism which fostered patriarchy, patriarchal religion and militarism. This would seem to be in harmony with your general outllook siouxrose.
Each stage after primitive communism is based on power relationships, but the nature of the dominance changes with the development of technology.
For instance, a feature of capitalist imperialism is the extent to which it utterly transforms the local economies of vassal states, so that they are structured to meet the needs of international capital, and not the needs of their own people. The imposition of mono-crop export economies is an obvious example.
Marx theorizes that the socialist revolution eventually brings us back to the class free society. One needs to emphasize the ecological unsustainablility of capitalism abit more than Marx may have been aware, but Marx certainly understood that capitalism was an unsustainable system for a host of reasons.
There is a lot of value to marxist theory as it makes explicit the idea of history as a struggle between the powerful few and the toiling masses. The Marxian notion of the centrality of class struggle has greatly influenced the thinking and evolution of all the liberation movements from the late 19th century onward.
Of course some of the most articulate and effective marxist revolutionaries have been women: Rosa Luxemberg, Emma Goldman, Mother Jones. The last two were Marxist Anarchist,
"There is no serious or meaningful controversy about this statement: 'Labor is the source of all wealth.'"
There certainly is! In fact, it's fair to say that that notion has been widely discarded because it has been shown to be untenable.
The contemplation of nature's beauty, for example, has great *value*, and therefore is a source of wealth. Wealth is not just material commodities! No human labor created Mother Nature!
"Untenable" means "inconvenient and an implicit threat to those in power."
"Widely discarded" means "relentlessly attacked through massive well-funded and pervasive propaganda efforts waged in behalf of the wealthy and powerful few for the purpose of protecting their interests."
Smith, Ricardo, Locke and Marx never claimed what you suggest they claimed. No one claimed that "human labor created Mother Nature."
You are mis-reprsenting Marx. Please see comments above.
So called radical enviros can shout all day about Mother Earth, but that will never rationally counter Marx's theories on political economy.
It would seem that on this and many other threads, many commenters replace serious thinking about the political economy of capitalism with a a half-assed and overly-emotional version "deep environmentalism" I believe this type of thinking originates with the wealthy class of environmentalists and their foundations. It has trickled down to infect and disempower many middle class radicals and some working class people.
I am not questioning the fact that the human race is in an ecological crisis, which is wrapped up in many other crises that have developed from capitalism. But just shouting "Mother Eart, Mother Earth" doesn't help. Furthermore, the complete mis-reading, and smearing of Marx, is bourgeoisie propaganda that undermines the struggles of the People of the World.
As Tom Larsen had discussed, they're not really radical or enviros. To be radical is to not be a drama king/queen. And environmental? Plenty of great ideas to share instead of making people feel guilty while not being helpful. I'd want to disagree but history confirms that you're right.
I like your perspective on that maxpayne.
People need to do what they can to reduce pollution and waste of resources. Wild places need to be kept wild. A sustainable system with a foundation in social justice and economic democracy was needed yesterday!. Instead the world, its people and nearly all life are ground up and fed into the gaping maw of the capitalist system, with the military being a prime component of the worldwide murder, torture, wreckage and poison that is US corporate imperialism.
I do not believe that the human race is destined to continue living under such vile and poisonous systems. We are meant to live free and love free in communion with all life.
But we are not free, and we live under what is basically the opposite of that utopia and it is called late stage capitalist imperialism, and both Marx and Lenin described this tragedy in precise terms. And while the USSR was ultimately failed, the Marxist and Leninist critique of capitalism is still accurate and valid. In particular, Lenin's concept of the export of the proletariat is in full swing. Also the idea that in late stage capitalism, the chief exports of the capitalist world would be financial products.
Marx provided a basis on which to build a revolution - the clear and accurate understanding of class interests and an organized and militant program to advance the interests of the masses while expropriating the ill gotten gains of the capitalist class until there is no longer a capitalist class
The most pressing questions that I see are, in general terms:
1. How to overthrow the capitalist militarist order
2. How to ensure that the replacement is not another militarist or authoritarian state
If humanity could harness all of its efforts to the building of a fair and sustainable society, we could yet survive, but this will not happen unless #'s 1 & 2 above are answered.
No amount of vegetarian scolding or earnest recycling will accomplish what is needed, particularly because these efforts run against the capitalist dynamic of ever increasing consumption and destruction.
It will take a world revolution, and then many years of rebuilding along just and sustainable lines, but I think that's our destiny.
I think there is a point here in that there are only so many in the top 1% and actually you have to get to the top 0.3% before you get to the really high salaries like $1 million per year.
So its probably more of a political move to calm down the 99% rather than a great revenue generator.
Probably they need to look at Corporate Taxes to get some real revenues to help with the deficit.
Now lets face the facts. The US has a deficit of $1.5 Trillion. Even if they cut the military in half, increase sin taxes significantly on gas, booze and cigarettes, increase income taxes on the top 1% and Corporations they are going to have great difficulty closing the gap.
This will not come up in the 2012 election because no one is willing to talk to about it.
"actually you have to get to the top 0.3% before you get to the really high salaries like $1 million per year"
That might well be true, but most rich people don't draw much in the way of salaries, they primarily have capital gains income. I'm not sure if you're using "salary" to mean strictly work compensation or all income, but I think Rall himself avoids being specific and when talking about taxation this really makes for a hard to follow muddle.