Robert Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, writes on May 28, 2012:
“True patriotism isn’t cheap. It’s about taking on a fair share of the burdens of keeping America going.
“Those who earn tens of millions of dollars a year but pay less than 14 percent of their incomes in taxes, and argue the rich should pay even less, are not true patriots.
“Those who defend indefensible tax loopholes, such as the “carried interest” loophole that allows private-equity managers to treat their incomes as capital gains even if they risk no income of their own, are not true patriots.
“Those who avoid taxes by putting huge amounts of their earnings into IRAs via foreign tax shelters are not true patriots.
“Those who want to cut programs that benefit the poor — Food stamps, child nutrition, Pell grants, Medicaid — so that they can get a tax cut for themselves and their affluent friends— are not true patriots.”
I would add that those who hoard ownership of productive capital and seek to own productive power that they cannot or won’t use for consumption, and deny ordinary Americans who do not have sufficient “past savings” to “risk” in the “casino stock market,” are beggaring their neighbor––the equivalency of mass murder––the impact of concentrated capital ownership.
