INCOME INEQUALITY: Does Tax Breaks for the Rich Help the Economy?

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Joseph Goebbels

When I debate with conservatives they tell me the same old story.  Some of the musings they come up with are, “I never found a job from a poor person” or “if rich people didn’t buy materialistic stuff, we couldn’t sell it, ship it or make it for them.”  They try and argue that unions and high taxes are the problem.  They agree with me when I say that the goal of some of these big companies is to make as much money as possible.

But then they say that because of unions and taxes, they had to send our jobs overseas to function freely and make money.

So I tell them these corporations and their executives pay a lower tax rate than you and me, and they have been getting richer while shipping our jobs to other countries.  I tell them if a goal for a big corporation is to make as much money as possible, that’s what they will do and that’s what they have been doing regardless of high taxes, and unions.

For good measure, I also inform them that if more money and power to the rich helps us all, why has their income grown for the past 20 years, while middle class wages has declined?  Now I am pro-business, but I am not pro greed.  I believe on the right have adopted the Gordon Gecko quote from the 1986 Wall Street film, “Greed is Good.”  I think some of these individuals truly believe that the greedier a person is that it will somehow helps us all.  Evidence suggests the opposite.

Money has always influenced politics.  But today it dominates our whole political system more than it ever has. Within both political parties big money from big people help fund political campaigns.  Politicians need money to fund their political races.  The problem or question rather is how much of a say does these bigwigs who donate to politicians have in writing the laws politicians make and the work they do?

Big people hire lobbyist to influence these politicians to work in their favor allowing them to make more money and having more freedom in their financial interests.  This is happening more and more within our political system.  Many believe today’s politicians and lawmakers work solely for the interests of big money, not in the interests of common people.

This problem has always been here but it really got out of hand under President Reagan who coined the phrase, “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”  Big corporations hungry for more profit and power found Reagan to be a vehicle to help them realize their greed.  Reagan worked with them and allowed deregulation, gave tax breaks to companies who shipped our jobs overseas, and preside over a closer relationship with businesses and lawmakers.

Hypothetically, we can say Reagan helped open the doors for the rich to get richer and not help in economic growth and grow wages among the middle class.  That’s what the Gipper preached and that’s what today’s Republicans preach.  Those who have wealth and power somehow disserve to have it and those that don’t are lazy moochers and want free stuff.

Now this is clearly wrong, but some people believe corporations are people and big corporations should have a larger role in our government.  These are the same people who think that ordinary citizens who have a larger role in government are socialist.   So in their words, if you don’t want a corporate takeover of our government which creates more income inequality, you are against the free enterprise system.

Economic freedom is a right for all, not just for corporations and the super-rich.  We all should have a say in our political system. We need to come up with new ideas to stop income inequality, grow the middle class and end political partisanship when discussing the future of our nation.