Representation by Taxation is Dead

I find most people in the first world are incredibly intelligent.  So smart, in fact, that whenever there is a national or global issue the majority seems to have an educated, expert opinion on the matter.  The internet has been a great place where people can show up and present their knowledge on everything.  There is no retribution, because on the internet you are faceless.  That egotistical extreme racist asshole that makes disparaging remarks on an internet forum on how this race or that race is the reason for all the problems of the earth could just be your mild mannered neighbor.  He’s not going to say those things in public because he enjoys borrowing your power tools, and having you watch his cat while on holiday.

The most recent event that has everybody spewing out their empty knowledge on the matter is of course the economy.  More specifically, who is responsible for the disparagement of wealth, who to blame for ruining the American Dream, and what to do to fix everything in the shortest amount of time possible.  The new face of the movement for economical reform is the Occupy Wall Street protesters, which quickly sprouted into a nationwide protest at several different locations.  I even saw a small demonstration of people at the capitol building in Columbus, Ohio, where I currently reside.  It would appear that anybody with enough money to enjoy the American Dream look down at the protesters as smelly hippies that don’t have jobs and don’t want to work hard for their wealth.  The protesters look down at the reasonably and extremely wealthy as the silver spoon, trust fund people who never had to face the challenges of the lower 99% of Americans.  The problem is, both sides have their own opinion on the issue, but as usual are extremely ill informed and don’t really know what they are fighting for, or against.

The protesters know that they are sick of the growing number of poor and lower middle class.  The ultra rich are sick of these liberal hippies (their words, not mine) smelling up their territory.  What is interesting to me is the media coverage of this whole thing.  The protests had been going on for more than a week before I started to see the media placing the news on their websites and newspapers.  Now there are several articles printed a day on any given news outlet about protests in whatever state, about which companies don’t pay their fair share, and how big business screws up the economy.  The thing is, this has been going on for decades but nobody does anything about it until an unruly mod appears.

I’ll admit, I am on the protesters side, and I am fed up with big business, which includes corporations as well as investment banks (such as the ones we paid first to screw us over, and then again to bail them out when screwing us over stopped making them money).  So why haven’t I lifted a finger to help the cause?  As it stands, these protests are just a show of force, but aren’t attacking anything specific.  They just hope to make a presence and expect someone to step up and make a change.  It’s a start of a movement that needs to transform into something much smarter.  The people they expect to resolve their problems are the same people that allowed this to happen in the first place.  These protests aren’t going to convince the wealthiest of Americans to stop taking advantage of our economic system out of good faith.  We are talking about the greediest, souless…est people on this Earth, that are more concerned about having power than wealth – it just so happens you must have wealth in order to have power.

I don’t want to sound hypocritical, but I believe what needs to be done is to start outlining the factors that contribute to disparagement of wealth.  This is how I see how wealth is gathered – an individual or group of individuals forms a company that produces goods or services.  This is the basis of an economy, and is needed for society.  These individuals receive money for the goods or services from the consumer.  Some of this money is paid to the workers for the company, some is paid to maintain the company (utilities and infrastructure), some is paid to people that invested in the company as dividends, some is paid to the government in taxes, and the rest is (should) be invested back into the company for growth (profits).  Seems simple enough – the entire global economy runs off this principle.

So it’s simple – A company loses revenue due to operating costs, dividends and taxes.  The leftover stuff is profit to re-invest in the company or other ventures.  With big business, these revenues and profits can be enormous and the payrolls for the top executives get higher and higher (re: Disparity of Wealth in America).  Somewhere, more cash is either pumped into the company or cash is freed up somewhere else to allow this extreme shift of money.  Whatever happens, the result is this – the top earners exponentially or geometrically grow their wealth, while the bottom earners have to fight for a raise, or even to keep their job.  This starts the uneven spread of wealth across our society, and it has been happening for decades… centuries, millennia even.  I’m sure if you look at any society that has ever existed, the scenario is all the same – the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.

So, now we have a movement on our hands.  The 99% is fed up with the rich getting richer at their expense.  Unfortunately this doesn’t solve anything.  Bringing the fight to the front door doesn’t stop the rich from sneaking out the back.  We, as a democratic society, need to put pressure on the government and our political parties to fix the funneling of mass quantities of money to the uber rich.  Capital investments are important to society, but only when they benefit everyone involved.  Many people who look down on these protesters because they think these people aren’t willing to work hard for their wealth are not looking hard enough into the underlying problem.  It’s not that they aren’t working hard enough to achieve the American Dream; they aren’t given a fair chance.  Thousands of people unemployed from the high school graduate to the doctorate.  Companies are throwing even more people on the street while giving the executives million dollar bonuses.  The 1%, or rather the 0.5% of top earners in this country know that in order to keep power in this society they must control the wealth of everyone else, or they will have more competition.

How do they do it?  How do these ultra rich, faceless enemies of the general public manage to make so much money while everyone else suffers?  The government and our politicians allow them to do so.  Big business lobbies for a complex tax system and loopholes to reduce their taxable income, so they have bigger profits to stuff the pocket books of the ultra rich.  They create offshore entities to amass an extreme amount of wealth and then tell the government that the only way the country will see this income is to allow them to move it into their US entities at a tax rate barely comparable to the 35% it should be, thus reducing the expecting income of the government that relies on this money to take care of its citizens.  Big business holds the government hostage, telling them the only way they will manufacture on American soil is if they get huge tax breaks, then somehow funnel income to other countries so they aren’t taxed for it.  They do all of this and when we complain they insist they are only conforming to our governments laws… only it’s not really the governments laws, rather the big business that puts out big cash influence into the political system.

It is sickening to think that most big businesses get their start in the US – from the American Dream, and then work so hard to destroy it for others.  The U.S. gave them an opportunity and they exploit it at every chance they can to make more money, to have more power.  It’s not just an act of unfairness or injustice.  It’s an act of treason.

Of course, saying all of this doesn’t make a lick of difference – no more than the Occupy protests do.  All I can say, is we need to hold our government, our politicians accountable for the decisions they make that regulate our economy.  We don’t need to tax the big business or the rich more; we need to tax them, period.  They need to be taxed fairly, just as the ordinary American.  Progressive tax, flat tax… whatever tax – as long as EVERYBODY is taxed.  Remove tax loopholes that allow the funneling and blanket movements of cash in and out of the country at reduced rates.  Increase excise taxes so it is no longer economical for companies to manufacture in other countries only to import the product straight to America (eliminating jobs AND reducing our export/import ratio, which directly effects GDP).  Remove high barriers to start a company so that when these greedy companies exit our economy all together because they don’t get their way, there is someone else waiting to pick up where they left off, in a much fairer manner.  Let these people know that we are not going to be bullied any longer.  Let our officials know we will only put them in office if they promise to stop letting big business get away with being greedy.  Let them know that everyone should have a shot at the American Dream.

TL;DR:  Dear government, stop letting the ultra rich big business and capital enterprises take advantage of the other 99.5% of Americans, and take care of the society you have sworn to protect.  We are still a Democracy, and we should still have a voice.