by Paul Buchheit

"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" --Peter Finch as Howard Beale in Network

Maybe a better movie analogy is Albert Brooks trying to get his money back from the casino in Lost in America.

How can we possibly get the money to balance the budget?

In Ashtabula County in Ohio, the police force was cut by more than half, and a judge suggested that the county residents arm themselves.

Because of cutbacks Texas couldn't comply with a law to install seat belts on school buses.

The Obama Administration estimated that 300,000 school employees will have been laid off in 2010.

Funding for food pantries, homeless shelters, and elderly assistance is disappearing.

We tax soda pop, churches, taxi rides, online poker. We cut after-school programs in low-income areas, library hours and park services. We increase state income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, gas taxes, cigarette taxes, utility costs, license fees, building permits, parking meter rates.

Yet how often do we hear about the massive redistribution of income from the rich to the poor over the last 30 years? The wealthiest 1% have tripled their share of our country's income -- not by working harder than the rest of us, but through tax cuts and financial deregulation. These 30 years have been immensely productive for the U.S., but the middle class worker makes less today, adjusted for inflation, than in 1980. All this while corporate profits have reached record levels and unemployment has increased dramatically.

I know, I know, Congress just renewed the tax cuts for the rich. Our representatives have lost touch with middle-class America. They stubbornly refuse to admit that the tax-cut stimulus hasn't worked, that it's decimated the middle class while leaving our country's infrastructure in woeful disrepair.

And they continue to blame the people for whom the stimulus hasn't found jobs.

Even worse, media propaganda has conditioned much of the populace to believe that government and the poor, rather than greed and the rich, are the culprits.

So without a tax increase on the rich to correct the 30-year redistribution, we need a creative, non-regressive approach to deficit reduction. Perhaps a financial transaction tax, especially on the high-risk derivatives and "credit default swaps" that nearly wrecked our economy. Economist James Tobin suggested something of the sort in 1972.

According to Labor Institute director Les Leopold, a .3% fee (about a third of a penny per dollar) on currency and stock and derivative transactions would generate about a half-trillion dollars a year for America. That's almost as much as we spend on the entire military.

(Not all financial transactions are destructive, of course. So it couldn't be called a "toxic tax," regrettably for those of us seeking linguistic payback for the "death tax.")

I know, this has as much chance of being adopted as traffic fines based on percentage of income. But it's another reason to stay mad as hell, which seems to be all a middle-class American can do these days.

Paul Buchheit is a faculty member in the School for New Learning at DePaul University.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/12/30-1

I am at the poverty level right now and I still thinks it pretty shitty for anyone to believe its ok to punish those who are successful in life. There is a lot of talk in washington about this and perhaps it should start with those millionaires first!

Its twice as crappy to punish the poor.

How is a straight 10 percent across the board punishing the wealthy it even when inpercentage wise.......its the same amount 10 percent of a hundred dollars is 10 dollars.....most of the wealthy don't pay much at all

If your poor its no doubt because you made poor life decisions.

The welathy benefit the most in our society. The public roads that make trade possible, they Navey that secures the sea lanes, the schools that provide educated workers, the list goes on and on, and lets not forget the police that keep the poor from stealing, its only fair that they pay their share of taxes.

If anyone should pay taxes its the leeches AKA welfare brats!

I agree they can most afford it. No one is calling for a redistribution of wealth these are trying times and if the most succsesfull wont make sacrafices to set things right how in the hell can they ask the poor to sacrafice even more of the little they have?

How about if the Government stops spending money on BS and takes care of America first? How about if these millionaire senators and members of congress lead by example?

They cant do anything they are the puppets of the billionairs who funded their elections.

Sure they can, they can redistribute some of their own wealth! Whatever percentage they're asking or telling others to pay they themselves should give up first. There is a guy name Pete Shepley who started out 35 years ago making release aids for archers in his garage and selling them out of his truck, 35 years later PSE archery is the largest bow manufacturer in the world, it took Pete his entire adult life to build this thing up and you think its ok for some **** head in DC to tell him its his duty to financially support somebody who obviously didn't take life seriously and is now living in poverty? That is just broken thinking

If they are in a position of power & leadership, they CAN do something, but they refuse to bite the hand that feeds them (special interests) at the expense of the American people.

Special Interests= the incredibly well to do.

Which also includes the politicians themselves.

Yes if they are not rich when they enter politics they soon get rich. Knowing that its no big suprise that the media also run by the rich frame all debates to their likeing. Any solution to a problemb will have little or no impact on their wealth and if they can find a solution that makes them even richer to the detriment of the country as a whole guesse what path they will choose?

Dont you mean they agree to extend tax cuts for ALL Americans? The top 1% just happen to also be Americans so they keep their tax cuts too.

a new 10% bracket was created for single filers with taxable income up to $6,000, joint filers up to $12,000, and heads of households up to $10,000.
the 15% bracket's lower threshold was indexed to the new 10% bracket
the 28% bracket would be lowered to 25% by 2006.
the 31% bracket would be lowered to 28% by 2006
the 36% bracket would be lowered to 33% by 2006
the 39.6% bracket would be lowered to 35% by 2006

There are the Tax brackets. Seeing that 34k-80k is the 25% bracket and I would say that is most of middle class America it is easy to see that the top 1% already pay 10% more than middle class America. That is 10% of a much higher income.

So you agree that your beloved politicians are rich too, and that they too supposedly part of the problem??

But do we see THEM paying 10%+ in taxes??

Yes I do agree, they are millionaires representing the interests of billionaires, for the most part. That being said the Dems do try to defend t he middle class because their additude is a strong middle class is good for business.

whats an additude?

Also it doens't take that much to be in the highest tax bracket if you are married, both work, and both have 4 year degrees.

yet, only 3 percent of americans are there,,,