The two movements have a lot more in common than they’d want to believe, and Tom Matlack thinks they can come together to fix our country.
As much as I personally wanted to admire and like President Obama (and still do, to some extent, as a father and husband), our country is broken and not getting any better. Foreign wars, debt, and income disparity have ravaged what was left of the American way. Our economy is in shambles, our education system a joke, and the prison system is no better than the countries we have been invading. The vast majority of Americans are hurting. Poverty is at an all-time high, as is unemployment, especially among men.
Meanwhile, our politicians bicker with one another over policies that to any normal guy are rounding error. Is raising taxes on millionaires a point or two really going to change the fundamental problem? Is changing the way that inflation is calculated for social security going to keep the whole system from going broke?
Pretty much everyone I know has the same response: give me an f’ing break!
To their great credit, activism started on the right with the Tea Party. They want less government, and they want it now. They see how corrupt the system is and want to wholesale replace the entire Congress with men and women who have taken an oath of honesty.
The Occupy Wall Street crowd is hard to pin down, but it seems to be reacting most strongly to the inequity of wealth that has been created by Wall Street. They have been joined by the labor unions in calling for intervention that will rectify the dominance of financial institutions and big business.
As painful as it is to watch our country in upheaval, Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party are both large groups of normal people who are attempting to recapture the democratic ideal of our founding fathers that has somehow been lost in the shuffle as we made our way into the 21st century. Both political parties have been bought off by the wealthy and left the majority of voters behind to rot in a purgatory of bad schools, unemployment, and prison.
So how about a grand meeting of the minds amongst the civilian leaders of populace movements of both sides to some guiding principals that frame a new American party aimed at forcing both the Democrats and Republicans either straight or out of existences. Here are some issues that working people from both groups could quickly agree to.
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Get money out of politics completely. As Sara Palin has suggested, “Do you want to know why nothing ever really gets done?” she said, referring to politicians. “It’s because there’s nothing in it for them. They’ve got a lot of mouths to feed — a lot of corporate lobbyists and a lot of special interests that are counting on them to keep the good times and the money rolling along.”
Reward innovation not financial criminals. We all love Steve Jobs because he almost single-handedly kept America cool and at the forefront of world technologically. He also didn’t seem to care much for money, living in a modest home and owning far less of Apple than he probably should have. Contrast Steve Jobs with investment bankers, hedge fund managers, and mortgage lenders who have crippled our economy while getting rich.
Cut taxes for everyone. Blow up the IRS. Institute a flat tax of 22.5% on all income above the poverty line. No payroll taxes. No deductions. One form with one line on it. Income times rate equals tax. While we are at make all illegal aliens pay income tax. Go after them for tax evasion, not their legal status.
Make education the #1 national security issue. The Taliban has killed a few thousand Americans. Our education system threatens to decimate a whole generation of our children. The key is not only to completely revamp our education system but to eliminate a separate-but-unequal system whereby access is granted exclusively to the rich. Having one brilliant student for every thousand who can’t read is not a civilized nation.
Get real about entitlements. Unless we want to end up like Greece, our government is too big. The elephant in the room is government programs we can no longer afford, like Medicare and Social Security, along with bankrupt pensions at every level of government.
These are the five core issues that face our country and, surprisingly, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements largely agree on what should be done.
Then let’s join hands and do it.
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Read Matt Salesses response to this article: Occupy Versus the Tea Party: Reconsidered
—Photos John Beagle, david_shankbone/Flickr
About Tom Matlack
I’m not convinced the democratic ideal of the founding fathers is the right model for the 21st century, but might I inquire as to your thoughts on corporate taxation? Would the flat tax–sans loopholes–apply to them as well?
JFB
The Founding Fathers’ ideal was not democracy. It was a republic which essentially lends power to a handful of representatives.
Yes jackie absolutely. Flat tax for all corporate and human citizens
From my understanding, the only ones that are legally required to pay federal tax, unless one is snared by the many hooks created to prevent one from slipping out of it, are the federal employees and corporations based in the US. There isn’t a an actual aw stating that every citizen is required to pay “federal income tax”. State income tax is a definite and is what supports schools and roads but the federal tax is a hushed mystery that has never legally been solved. It’s latest round of invention was right after the creation of the federal reserve (a private) banking system in 1913. Things have gone very wrong ever since then. Those that are legally supposed to be paying federal tax, like giant oil corporations, are paying near nothing or are being subsidized by tax payers.
And the virtual entirety of the annual federal tax revenues are only paying off the interest of leasing our accumulating currency from the federal reserve bank. The national debt has nowhere to go but up due to the design of the loan structure of our currency.
The problem of our economy will never be solved unless we can get out from under the debt to the privatized, central banking system, known as the federal reserve. I don’t see this happening with a vote, any vote.
If these are truly your idea of “solutions” to our country’s problems that Tea Partiers and Occupy Wall Street could both get behind, you are dreaming.
Yes, getting money out of politics completely is a good idea (although I certainly wouldn’t go quoting Sarah Palin as some kind of sage on this topic; it’s ironic that she should complain about anyone else being into politics just for the money!). Rewarding innovation as opposed to financial criminals also makes sound basic sense, although Steve Jobs, for all his good points, doesn’t really deserve the hagiography you give him. And making education the #1 national security issue is also an excellent idea. But “cut taxes for everyone”? “Blow up the IRS”? How is a flat tax going to even help with your improve-education goal, much less anything else? All it’s going to do is gouge the poor, while being only a little skin off the nose of the rich. And if your idea of “getting real about entitlements” means dumping Medicare, Social Security and “bankrupt pensions,” forget it. These are the safety nets and the programs that were designed to keep the disabled and elderly who can no longer work from having nothing at all. It’s unfair to tell people who paid into a system designed to protect them in their disabiility or old age “Sorry, we can’t afford to pay out on what you paid into.” Do we need sick and old people on the streets again the way they were in the Depression? I don’t think so. And no, I don’t think the wealthier elderly should have to surrender their entitlements. These programs were designed for the benefit of all. Wealthier people shouldn’t have to forgo them any more than they should be forced to pay for their own private firefighting services if their house catches fire, while others get free service from the fire department from paying taxes. If you pay into the system, you deserve a payout. Period.
There is, quite simply, no way Tea Partiers and Occupy Wall Street protesters will see eye to eye in the end. Both believe there is a problem with government, but each group leans toward wildly different ideas as to the solution. For the most part, Tea Partiers think a smaller government, lower taxes and forcing more people to take care of their own education (forget making it a #1 national security issue! You’re on your own!) and old-age pensions will solve everything. For the most part, Occupy Wall Street wants to see reform that takes the shape of progressively higher taxation on the rich, government controls on banks and other financial gamblers, and a reshifting of governmental priorities toward making sure that everyone gets a decent education and doesn’t have to face illness or old age on his or her own without a safety net. (Of course, Tea Partiers don’t really want to do without their own government safety net, either; it just hasn’t occurred to many of them that the Social Security and Medicare they benefit from ARE government programs.)
It is not enough to be in agreement on the problem. One must also agree on the solution. Tea Partiers and Occupy Wall Streeters may look like siblings under the skin, but they are not. Tea Partiers think government is an evil to be shrunk or tossed aside altogether; Occupy Wall Streeters see it as a good thing that is, sadly, temporarily being controlled by and for the benefit of only a tiny group of people. The few Tea Partiers, libertarians and Ron Paul supporters currently joining in on the Occupy movements will eventually have to fall away, because what they’ll eventually find is that the majority of their fellow protesters don’t see things the way they do at all.
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Well spoken!! Easy to understand for the most basic novice who does not understand basic economics and the more advanced student of economics. I also BELIEVE THAT EDUCATION is the #1 key to saving the economy. My son is an R.N…..a diploma nurse, but highly skilled in very technical aspects of patient care. He currently earns somewhere around 80/100K . The hours are tough (nights) for him, but he lives very well and receives 1 or 2 recruitment notices every week from other medical facilities who are aware of his skills, offering $10K salary increase a year and all moving expenses.
Remember in the 50″s and 60′s when skilled machinists designed and built the parts that became our space program? They invented electronic equipment that continually shrunk in size, but gave us the products that we take for granted today !! NOW in 2011, the Germans, Seimens, A.G., is building a $ Billion factory in Taiwan..This factory will build machine processing equipment for China..!!!! China’s plan is to utilize the machine technology for building huge factories to automate production to make millions of household goods for their burgeoning masses. AND, America GETS NOTHING in all this massive industrialization of China.
Tru well that’s just the attitude that is killing our country frankly.
Go read the piece I quoted on Palin. Sure there is plenty I don’t like about her. But she made some very good points about how our politicians are bought off and don’t do anything other than play to the money.
Let me refine my points for your benefit with more specifics:
* Get money out of politics means creating a system where neither corporations nor individuals can financially support candidates for office or lobby them while in office other than to simply express their opinions. No money in the political game nowhere, nohow. Public debates and an even amount of air time for all candidates.
* Nationalize education. Don’t allow Harvard to have a $20 billion endowment while only a tiny fraction of the country will ever be entitled to attend. Create an integrated nationwide system of education that builds on our strengths and creates true universal access for all at all levels from beginners to Yale Law School (believe it or not I agree with Clarence Thomas on that much).
* Flat tax actually is a huge improvement over the current system which is blatantly regressive. Cap gains are taxed at 15%. Payroll taxes are applied to low income rather than high. The system is riddled with inconsistencies and complexity. I was the CFO of a billion dollar company and I can not understand my own taxes. How the hell is the average worker?
* Innovation over greed. The one thing we still have going for us as a nation is our ability to create jobs and prosperity through great, revolutionary ideas like Apple, Google, even FB (as much as I hate Zucks). The problem is that all the wealth of the last decade has been created by literally financial engineering that robs people rather than creating jobs. We have the ability to change that by focussing our higher education on innovation, by creating incentives for building great companies that help our economy and our people, while penalizing those who profit from doing nothing but moving money around and taking a spread on those too dumb to understand they just got robbed.
* I am all for taking care of our own but we can’t stick our head in the toilet and pretend that at our current deficit (built up in no small part through spending $2.5 trillion on wars that we couldn’t win BTW) we can ignore the simple math that says we will not be able to maintain entitlements at current levels. I also agree with the Tea Party that our government–in part due to corruption of money and in part due to stupidity–is vastly inefficient in providing the stated goals of protecting the most vulnerable of our citizens. So I am simply saying that we have to pay the bill. We have to look at all the entitlement programs and reset rather than running our country into bankruptcy. There is no other realistic alternative. To say that we can’t touch social security and medicare is to hold us all hostage to reason and prudence.
“Let me refine my points…with a few specifics”
In other words, you popped off like the right-of-center asswipe you are and want to make some ex-post facto amends. We see through it, though. Lots of people who will depend on Social Security would calmly entertain a conversation about future solvency, but not with people who call it a ‘white elephant’ that ‘we can no longer afford.’ People like you are what we can no longer afford.
Oh, for the proscriptions of the Second Triumvirate.
I can’t begin to say how wrong this is. Not because I don’t agree with it (which I don’t) but because many of these statements are just factually inaccurate.
First of all, the Tea Party is flush with money from big businesses, the transactions often rather shady and guarded (see here for an example: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42481.html). The Occupy movement isn’t backed by corporations.
Second, the Tea Party and the Occupy movement disagree on at least 4 of these 5 issues. The Tea Party would gladly see the war on terror continue, a much higher priority than education. The Occupy movement is not out to slash Medicare or Social Security.
It’s the flat tax rate, though, that really gets it wrong, on a fundamental level not only to the argument that these two movements are close in their beliefs but to the health of the country.
Have a look at these charts: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph. They show rather simply the inequality that is going on this country.
Taxing the rich at 22.5% would be the lowest rate since before 1945. That’s a problem in two ways: 1. because the country wouldn’t have enough money to operate in anywhere near the manner it has been operating (read: supporting the wars the Tea Party supports (on terror, immigration, drugs, etc.)) and 2. because that would be asking someone making slightly over the poverty line to live below the poverty line due to taxes while someone who makes 10 million dollars would still make 77.5 million dollars.
The Occupy movement stands for exactly the opposite of this. The superrich, i.e. people making over $1.1 million dollars on average (1 out of every 100 people, while 90 of 100 people are making less than $32,000 on average—think about that) can afford to be taxed far more, and should be.
Matthew:
Since both the Tea Party and the Occupy movements are quite broad its hard to pin down exactly what either of them stand for in particular, to be honest. But let me just take you on in one respect: most rich people pay 15% tax right now or less. That is what Warren Buffet was talking about. You also misunderstand what I am proposing at the bottom end. All income up to the poverty line is tax free. So let’s say for the sake of argument the poverty line is $25k and you make $40k. You will be taxed only on the the $15k over the poverty line.
You may be right that the rich should pay more over time, but how about we start out with a level playing field as a first step rather than a regressive system? Can you agree to that?
How about if we go straight to progressive taxation, without loopholes and reinstitute seriousness about the fact that unearned income is just that? How about the end of limited liability for corporate shareholders who aren’t pension funds? How about capital punishment for capital flight, including investment in countries where the only ‘comparative advantage’ is the absolute advantage of low labor costs. How about reminding people that Apple was and is addicted to planned obsolescence?
I think your five points are right on target, Tom. I don’t know that they necessarily add up to a middle ground between the extremes of the Tea Party and the Wall Street protesters, but, frankly, I think—particularly in the current political climate—that each represents an impossible dream, however. You’ve cited significant goals that we, as a country, should aim for, but I doubt that we’ll ever reach. Sad, yes, but true. Politics and money go hand in hand these days, for example, and I don’t see how anything short of a cataclysm will ever break that bond. The flat tax? How many times has that been proposed—then dropped? Reading through your solution I was saddened at the realization of its impossibility. Our corrupt systems are virtually unchangeable.
I simply refuse to accept that Mervyn.
They said men don’t like to read books either…and look at GMP.
Get money out of politics means creating a system where neither corporations nor individuals can financially support candidates for office or lobby them while in office other than to simply express their opinions
How about this: Senators and Representatives be paid the national average income, or some reasonable multiple of it to account for the need for dual residences (home district and DC.). That’s all. No special benefits, no fat pensions. And most of all… .the DEATH PENALTY for taking bribes or profiting from the office in any way. If a bill comes up that benefits a company they own stock in, they must either divest or recuse from voting, or they hang. By the neck. Til dead. On the evening news.
If we did this, then the only way the politicians could give themselves a raise, would be by increasing the national average income. Better yet, use the MEDIAN, not the mean, since making a few paper trillionaires could raise the mathematical mean without helping most of us, but an increase in the median would be a truer indicator of increasing broad-based prosperity.
This is one of the few concepts that I think far right (eg, me) and far left could agree on. Any takers?
If just 5% of complainers would read, not scan, the novel, “The FECMA Conspiracy” by BSH Ridgeway, our problems would go away. Look! We are a nation of dreamers; too many dream of change, but fail to produce the mechanics to get it started!
I always admired the willingness of men like Julius Caesar and the Second Triumvirate to use proscription to advance the downfall of the corrupt, plutocratic Roman Republic. I guess that makes me a taker, although you should know that Catonians like yourself would be on my list. After we used you for all we could get, of course.
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A flat tax is regressive – we need a progressive income tax for individuals. A corporate income tax is also unnecessary, as long as the tax rates for individuals are high enough.
A corporation **is** an individual. It’ll be the first to tell you that. No one points a gun at an enterprise’s head and says, “incorporate.” Why shouldn’t it pay income tax?