Donald A. Collins

The Rich Got To Charge Our Record National Debt To Us Taxpayers

By Donald A. Collins | 5 September 2020
Church and State

(Photo by Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons)

Far smarter people than me have now figured out what happened to our bloated national debt, but apparently were loath to tell us until the deal was done.

Certainly the joyous tax cuts for the wealthy from the high 30’s to 21 percent for corporations done by Trump in 2017 accelerated the situation, but clearly the tax increase myth that by raising taxes we would cut innovation and would cut productivity is simply not true!

Fostered by Milton Friedman and the University of Chicago school economists that got adopted as gospel by the Reagan Administration in 1980 has not helped the average citizen but has built a rich autocracy which now governs Congress and has driven many of our poorer citizens to the wall.

In short the rich got to charge our bloated national debt to us taxpayers.

The September 3, 2020 front page Wall Street Journal story tells the story, but for me the article doesn’t articulate clearly enough what I just wrote in the previous sentence.

You can read the entire page one WSJ article here.

Breaking: U.S. government debt next year will exceed what the economy produces, a mark not seen since World War II, as the country spends trillions to combat Covid-19 https://t.co/P3bWG5ayun

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) September 2, 2020

You have read a lot about the billionaires from Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk or the benign guru from Omaha, Warren Buffett, and his brilliant and publicly focused friend Bill Gates, Jr, but perhaps you don’t know that MacKenzie Scott has become the world’s richest woman. MacKenzie Scott — philanthropist, author and ex-wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos — is now the wealthiest woman in the world. Read about her here in CNN Business.

Never in American history have the billionaires been so numerous and the philanthropy of many such as Buffett and Gates should not and cannot be the substitute for effectively functioning tax payer governmental agencies.

Like all the oligarchies of history that get so out of balance, this one will not work in the best interests of our democracy.

Tim Cook just sold some of his Apple stock which netted him a huge low taxed capital gain. That money will be used but where? Too much is too much. You can read about that here.

Henry Ford, not lauded for many of his racial attitudes, did understand that to sell his model A and T cars early in the last century one needed to give workers enough wages to buy them and he paid his workers a high daily wage to make that happen.

Many others business and governmental leaders also realized that fact through the post World War II and Korean War years, as we embarked on a number of foolish foreign wars to test our bloated military establishment’s arms, which has given us much well paid domestic employment and huge profits to those defense companies.

Too bad that as we spend annually over $700 billion for defense but find that the US Post Office of $7 billion yearly and loses over $8 billion is considered worthy by some of being made a political football instead of confirming its key tradition as a major employer of middle class citizens.

You can read about our defense budget here.

The federal government should put more funds into rebuilding the nation’s aging infrastructure rather than purchasing new destabilizing nuclear weapons, large aircraft carriers, and flawed fighters.

More from @LarryKorb 👇 https://t.co/lFKWvOFbrT

— American Progress (@amprog) May 6, 2020

You can read about the Post Office here.

Yet we must give Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev huge credit for making nuclear war less likely.

But the ultimate view of Friedman that corporations should only be focused on profit was the view that got us to where we are today. Supply side economics always fails and for 40 years we have been going in the wrong direction.

Trump’s reelection would truly continue us on that wrong road to economic and social disaster.

His charge of Biden being a socialist is thus, based on the record, so far from reality that compared to what 40 years of oligarchy capitalism has created, we can only assume he seeks to finalize the dictatorship of oligarchy capitalism in his reelection.

Yet his snookered 40 percent base apparently don’t or won’t wake up.

So Trump’s 2nd term fear agenda is based on waving American flags, pushing the Christian religion as primary to all Americans, being for the 2nd Amendment so non-governmental gun bearers can go to politically Democratic cities to “help” police put down peaceful protesters, being against safe abortions for women, and saying after Charlottesville that racists are okay, seems to have not penetrated the consciousness of that 40 percent who kowtow to his view as the best way forward.

Can’t wait for the 3 debates between Biden and Trump to see how the incumbent handles answers to the above circumstances.

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC., has spent over 40 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013.

From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013