by Matthew R. Andrews
Although the current economic crisis is commonly discussed as beginning in 2007, workers in the United States have been experiencing stagnant wages and cuts to social spending for four decades. At the same time, the tax burden has been shifting from corporations to people, and from the rich to the middle and lower classes. The long term consequences of this policy trend are coming home to roost. Policies from the New Deal era that we thought were untouchable are now on the chopping block. Thanks to Occupy and a handful of new campaigns, a new narrative about taxes is finally seeing daylight.
The old narrative on taxes has been carefully constructed over the decades by think tanks, lobbyists, the commercial media and a small layer of the super rich. Despite being full of myths and holes, ideas that began on the marginal right-wing edges of political debate have steadily crept into mainstream discourse. The advent of globalization and the decline of union power accelerated the process. Today it’s common to hear politicians saying government doesn’t create jobs, even though 4.4 million people are employed by the Federal Government, 3.8 million by state governments, and a whopping 10.8 million by local government. Government doesn’t just create jobs. It is the country’s largest employer. When millions are pushed out of work by the private sector’s market fluctuations we should expect our government, which is responsible for the welfare of all, not the profits of stockholders, to pick up the slack. Full Article…