In the year that the Twin
Towers were wiped off of New York’s landscape, another attack - without the
horror or "spectacle" of the first, struck Americans: in June of 2001,
George W. Bush announced a series of cuts and exemptions for income and property
taxes, dividends, etc. for the wealthiest.
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by WORLDMEETS.US
The measure proved to be just
as wicked as the Iraq invasion. On top of the moral issues that it raised, the
consequences were disastrous. Bill Clinton had left a surplus that was transformed
into the current mountain of debt - and this, rather than wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan (which cost $1.7 trillion between 2002 and 2009), was the central
cause.
This is the same deficit that
Republicans want so badly to fight today, and that keeps Barack Obama hostage
to a Congress that won't allow him to raise taxes. If this regime of exceptions
for the rich doesn’t end in 2012, the country won't be able to collect $3.75
trillion over the next decade. Some might argue that the tax burden was
excessive and that this money was wisely spent on the creation of businesses
and jobs - in short, wealth. But none of this has been proven. All we know for
sure is that the wealth gap between Americans has widened.
It was against this backdrop
that one of the richest men in the world wrote an opinion piece in The New
York Times (Stop
Coddling the Super-Rich). In it he demonstrates that his employees have a
much greater tax burden than he does, and asserts that he, like the rest of the
millionaires, should pay more taxes. It seems obvious - and it is. But coming
from a man like him, it's a slap in the face to the political class in
Washington as well as his colleagues who made fortunes after lobbying for the measure.
