Tax The Rich At 90% To Preserve US Democracy. (Photo: Common Dreams)

Would Taxing The Rich At 90% Preserve US Democracy?

By Reia Leen Delantar On Jun 4, 2023

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“Succession” is over, but spoiled, entitled billionaire man-children are still around, running social media firms, owning newspapers and television networks, and paying politicians and judges who then keep taxes low and regulations to a minimum.

Roosevelt’s New Deal created the world’s first middle class. (Photo: Common Dreams)

America Is The Most Unequal Industrialized Society, With Extreme Poverty And Prosperity Coexisting

America is the most unequal industrialized society in the world, with millionaires paying an average functional income tax rate of 3.1 percent. Since the 1920s and 1930s, extreme poverty and prosperity have coexisted in such extremes. Schools in red states are crumbling due to underfunding, gun violence is common, and homelessness is a concern for city people. The last time such acute poverty and excessive riches coexisted was in the 1920s and 1930s.

The last time disparity was observed was during the Republican “Roaring ’20s,” when Warren Harding reduced the top income tax rate and the wealthy bought politicians and gangs that plundered and killed with impunity.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal increased the top income tax level from 25% to 90%, creating the world’s first middle class. Wealthy individuals cried and yelled, but the top tax rate established the first middle class which accounted for more than half of the country’s population.

FDR Established The Middle Class With Taxes And Unions

With hefty taxes on the wealthy and strong unions for working-class people, FDR established America’s first widespread middle class. Unions were first used by Abraham Lincoln to describe labor organizations, and by the 1920s, the union movement had taken over the country, but employers and Republican politicians were still using police, the army, and private armed militias to kill union leaders and intimidate people who wanted to join them.

In 1935, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Wagner Act legalized unions, resulting in one-third of all Americans having a good union job by 1981. Because unions established the local pay and benefit floor for companies, two-thirds of American employees had union-level salaries and benefits by 1981.

People who were obscenely wealthy from the 1930s through the 1980s received their wealth mostly from their 19th-century Gilded Age ancestors. The 90 percent income tax rate and union demands meaningful salaries preserved inequality at a manageable level. Some CEOs now earn thousands of times more than their lowest-paid employees.

FDR and LBJ’s Social Safety Nets Resulted In A Decrease In Crime And An Increase In Lifespans, Leading To A Wealth Explosion

FDR and LBJ’s social safety nets caught Americans before they could fall into poverty. Social Security and unemployment benefits were rolled out by FDR in the 1930s, while Medicare and Medicaid (1960s) kept Americans healthy. This resulted in a decrease in crime and an increase in lifespans. When the grinding inequality of the Roaring ‘20s and Republican Great Depression went away, crime sprees and hate-promoting demagogues went with it. Working people with decent wages and benefits have neither the time nor the need to engage in criminal activity.

Corporate executives and media moguls lived and worked in affluent areas, with workers earning enough to live comfortably. To see their houses, watch an episode of Bewitched or The Dick Van Dyke Show.

The morbidly wealthy agitated for a return to the 1920s, seeking tax cuts and the demise of unions. Reagan reduced the top tax rate in 1981 and demolished the air traffic controllers union. This resulted in a 42-year-long wealth explosion at the pinnacle of our economic hierarchy, making today’s billionaires wealthier than the pharaohs. They vie for the biggest private aircraft, mega-yachts, multiple houses, private islands, and even their own spaceships.

Disney’s classic Scrooge McDuck comics have come to life, while the middle class has shrunk from two-thirds of the population in 1980 to 45 percent today. As a result, American life expectancy has followed the same path as other countries that rejected Reaganomics. This is in contrast to other countries throughout the world that have rejected Reaganomics.

With their 1978 First National Bank decision, five Republican appointees on the Supreme Court began the process of destroying the American Dream by declaring that billionaire and corporate money was a form of “free speech” and that corporations had full rights under the Bill of Rights, including the right to use their “free speech” to own politicians.

The terrible Lewis Powell ruling enabled the morbidly wealthy to purchase the Republican Party in 1979. Reagan then rewarded the GOP’s wealthy patrons with reduced taxes, more tax-code loopholes, and a large industrial and banking deregulation push, giving special favor to fossil fuel and other polluting industries through his EPA Administrator, Anne Gorsuch.

Reaganomics Destroyed The American Dream And Rewarded Wealthy Patrons With Reduced Taxes, Loopholes, And Deregulation

The morbidly wealthy will shriek at the idea of these tried-and-tested methods, warning that the country will collapse or communism would take over and destroy the economy. President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously stated that the fight was for democracy through taxation, while Oliver Wendell Holmes once stated that taxes are the cost of civilized society. To evaluate a government’s social conscience, one must study how taxes are collected and spent, and to determine an individual’s social conscience, one must obtain their tax reaction.

Roosevelt observed that as society grew more sophisticated and complex, so did the demands on government and the need to fund its services through taxes. However, many people are still unaware of their benefits and wish to avoid paying their taxes. Most small municipalities have paved and lit their streets, installed town sewers, provided water supplies, formed fire departments, built high schools and public libraries, and built parks and playgrounds in the last two generations. These initiatives have to be paid for using tax dollars.

Roosevelt presented the necessity to raise taxes on the extremely wealthy into the 90% range (between 1932 and 1936, he slashed income taxes on persons earning less than $50,000 per year) as a patriotic act. He said that the conflict has been fought between two forces: the vast majority of citizens who feel that the benefits of democracy should be spread and are prepared to pay their fair share, and a small but powerful faction that opposes the extension of those benefits. This small but strong group had its fair share of frontmen, the Fox “News” hosts of the time, who stated that giving workers power or raising taxes on the morbidly wealthy was against the natural order of things and would lead to communism or economic collapse.

The most important details in this text are that Republicans’ attempts to raise taxes on the morbidly wealthy, enforce anti-monopoly laws, restore workers’ right to unionize and end the “right” of billionaires and corporations to buy politicians and Supreme Court justices will not be bluffed or bludgeoned. This is a fallacy because raising taxes on the extremely wealthy is still feasible and has the resources to create a healthy and happy middle class across the country. It is time for every one of us to follow in the footsteps of Paul Revere and Franklin D. Roosevelt and inform our friends and neighbors about both the threats we face and the promise that our country once embraced and may attain again.