Since Reagan the benefits of growth have gone almost exclusively to the richest among us. Real wages have stagnated while corporate profits have boomed. The average American earns about the same in real terms as in 1973 while the number of billionaires has skyrocketed. Republicans like to stress symbolic and social issues because their economic policies have not served the interests of most Americans.
It the Democrats want to win they have to show the majority of Americans that liberal economic policies will improve their personal well-being. One of the few long-term benefits of this incompetent administration is that less and less are Americans impressed by spin. Words are no longer enough. We need actions.
All of us hate paying taxes. In 1913, when the constitutional amendment allowing income tax was passed, only the richest American's paid it. Now, of course, everybody does. Bush's tax reforms have strongly favored the very rich. His tax cuts have been disproportionately to the top 1%, and within that top 1% disproportionately to the top .01%. We need to change that.
Here is my modest proposal. How about a tax reform that TOTALLY eliminates the tax on incomes under $50,000 and raises them proportionally on higher incomes? Perhaps if you make $200,000 you get taxed at a 60% rate, if you make $1,000,000 you get taxed at 95%. After all, these were the tax rates during much of the post WWII era, our period of greatest economic growth.
This reform would have to be revenue neutral. I don't know what the actual numbers would be but it seems a straightforward thing that a bright economist could figure out pretty easily.
Only an alliance between the working class and the middle class will win us back the White House. By effectively using social and symbolic issues the Republicans managed an alliance between the rich and the middle class. We need to show middle class Americans that our party looks out for them. A tax cut, combined with a demonstration that Republican economic policies have been tilted towards the rich would do that.
My worry is that the Democrats don't want to win. How else do we explain our failure in 2000, running against a cokehead draft-dodger whose major accomplishment was getting his daddy's friends to buy him a baseball team? We cannot depend on them nominating an idiot every time.
It is the economy stupid. Words are not enough. If we want to win, if we want to keep America a middle class country we need action. A tax reform that eliminates taxes for all of the poor and much of the middle class, leaves taxes the same for people at the 90th percentile and soaks the rich would be a winning strategy. An easy first step would be reinstating the estate tax, a tax only the top 2% of Americans ever paid
Again, I don't know the exact numbers to maintain revenue neutrality but the principle is straight -forward. Eliminating taxes (or at least drastically cutting taxes) for most Americans would clearly be a vote getter.