Budget garbage

Feeling sluggish? Need a jolt stronger than a third cup of coffee? Here’s something that ought to get your blood circulating — boiling, in fact.

The Wall Street Journal has found out where the budget problem comes from: too many taxes on the rich.

Surprised? Did you think the rich pay hardly any taxes, while working people are stuck with the cost of all those wars and prisons? Funny, so did we.

But the Journal, after presumably doing a lot of digging, found an expert who can explain why just the opposite is true. It’s worth quoting their article of March 26, “The Price of Taxing the Rich.” You’re gonna love it.

“As Brad Williams walked the halls of the California state capitol in Sacramento on a recent afternoon, he spotted a small crowd of protesters battling state spending cuts. They wore shiny white buttons that said ‘We Love Jobs!’ and argued that looming budget reductions will hurt the Golden State’s working class.

“Mr. Williams shook his head. ‘They’re missing the real problem,’ he said.

“The working class may be taking a beating from spending cuts used to close a cavernous deficit, Mr. Williams said, but the root of California’s woes is its reliance on taxing the wealthy.”

There’s another Brad Williams who is a stand-up comedian, but this one will make you laugh till you cry.

So here’s his argument: California, where he used to be the chief economist and forecaster for the California Legislative Analyst’s Office, got too comfortable depending on taxes from rich people. Then came the economic crisis and their nine-figure incomes became “volatile.” So state revenues took a hit.

The conclusion? The state shouldn’t have “relied” on getting taxes from the rich. You get it? Don’t tax the rich because their incomes are not stable. One year they may have made $350 million and the next year only $250 million because the markets went down.

This is a very interesting argument. Let’s look at it from another point of view. When there’s a recession/depression, millions of workers lose their jobs. Their incomes might go from $40,000 a year to $15,000. So they’ll barely be paying taxes. Hey, maybe they shouldn’t have been taxed in the first place. Then the state and federal governments wouldn’t miss that money if the economy goes down.

The fly in the ointment of Williams’ innovative theory is that the rich already pay very little in taxes.

In the 28 years from 1979 to 2007, the pre-tax income of the top 1 percent of families in the U.S. rose by 141 percent. But what they had left after taxes soared by 281 percent, going from an average income of $346,600 to $1,319,700. The Reagan and Bush tax cuts for the rich allowed them to double and triple the already-high rate of growth of their incomes.

In the same period, the after-tax income of the lowest fifth of the population rose by only $2,400, amounting to just 16 percent. (Congressional Budget Office figures)

The obscene growth of wealth at one pole and poverty at the other speeded up even more in 2008, and then the markets crashed.

Workers don’t need capitalists

The only thing honest about the Wall Street Journal’s article was the use of the term “working class.” At last they have to admit that the vast majority of people in this country are part of a class of workers and not just somewhere in the “middle.”

Here’s what Marxists deduce from the growth of income by the super-rich while government budgets are being slashed:

1. Under the capitalist system, the rich can never get enough. It’s not just individual greed; it is how the system works. Those whose fortunes don’t grow are thrust aside by more ruthless capitalists who will do anything to boost their profits — from bribing legislators to cut their taxes (known as lobbying), to laying off millions of workers when the system goes into crisis, to cutting wages and axing benefits, to scouring the earth for places where they can pay even less and rip off natural resources for a song.

2. Workers don’t need capitalists. Wealth is not created by capitalists; it’s created by workers. Paper wealth is just that — paper. Treasury notes, stocks and bonds, dividend coupons wouldn’t be worth anything if workers weren’t creating new goods and services every day.

3. Workers don’t need capitalist bosses to “create jobs.” In a socialist society, workers own the wealth and we decide what is needed: how much of our labor should be spent on creating new products; how much time should go into improving the infrastructure and the environment; how much time we can spend on relaxation, culture, sports and so on. Under socialism there is no reason for unemployment. Everyone can get work. Workers aren’t pitted against each other in a labor “market” that promotes racism, sexism, lesbian-gay-bi-trans-queer oppression, ageism, disability prejudice and super-exploitation of immigrants.

And under socialism there is no place for a Wall Street or a Wall Street Journal that feeds us garbage and calls it news.