On July 7, 2013, Richard (RJ) Eskow writes an op-ed on the Campaign For America’s Future Web site, which was published by NationOfChange.org:
“The American people are on our side,” says Rep. Keith Ellison, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “The time is now.”
Ellison was talking to a small group of writers and activists about higher tax rates for US corporations. Although he was upbeat, Ellison acknowledged that winning those tax increases would be an uphill fight.
That kind of effort can’t succeed without widespread public action behind it. Can an organized movement be created to support tax increases for corporations?
Unfortunately, the “left” side of the debate is currently represented by President Obama’s unwise proposal to “simplify” the tax code by eliminating many deductions and lowering the basic tax rate in a way that’s described as “revenue neutral.” “Revenue neutral”? That would freeze corporate taxes at their current, destructively low levels.
And while the President is right to oppose many corporate tax breaks, the net effect of his current budget proposal — his opening bid in negotiations with Congress — would only raise corporate taxes by one percent.
What’s more, the President’s proposal to eliminate many deductions would rob lawmakers of the tools they need to discourage abusive behavior, like polluting the environment and shipping jobs overseas, or to reward socially constructive behavior like hiring more Americans or investing in equipment that produces more jobs.
Obama’s position on corporate taxation has become the de facto position of his party, thereby robbing the public of a real debate. On this issues, as with so many others, the majority’s will remains marginalized inside the Beltway.
Change is possible. There’s a strong alignment between the interests and desires of most voters and those of small and medium-sized businesses. People overwhelmingly support increasing tax contributions from large corporations.
Why is the Washington consensus so out of touch with the public’s will or the needs of the economy? “You can have seventy or eighty percent of the people on your side,” says Ellison, “and still find that a highly organized minority can beat a diffuse majority.”
That’s true – especially when the minority in question contributes hundreds of millions of dollars to political campaigns, and has a habit of offering highly lucrative Board memberships or lobbying jobs to politicians once they leave office.
But there are ways to counter that kind of influence. One of the best is by threatening politicians with the thing they fear most: losing elections.
And the time to act is now. “Inside Congress,” says Keith Ellison, “taxation is already a full-on conversation.”
“We’re not talking in isolation when we talk about corporate taxes,” Ellison adds. “We’re literally telling people we cannot afford Head Start, student loans, or Social Security.”
“We should look for opportunities to create and agitate the debate,” Ellison says. “There are members of Congress, even Republicans, who might be persuaded to end corporate tax giveaways.”
While this op-ed casts raising the tax rate on corporations to redistribute earnings to pay for increased social services, the idea should be embraced because it provides the opportunity to offer a zero-tax on corporations who fully pay out 100 percent of their earnings to their individual stock owners, and who finance FUTURE productive capital asset formation using Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) and Capital Homestead Accounts (CHAs).
The reality of the economic state of affairs in the United States is that income inequality, unemployment, underemployment and anemic GDP growth is rooted in the tectonic shift in the technologies of production and its concentrated ownership, which, as a practical matter, is destroying jobs and devaluing the worth of labor, widening the income gap between the rich and poor and struggling (each resentful and suspicious of the other), and resulting in our inability to achieve double-digit GDP growth.
The result is the consumer populous is not able to get the money to buy the products and services produced increasingly by the non-human factor––physical productive capital––as a result of substituting machines for people. And yet you can’t have mass production without mass human consumption. It is the exponential disassociation of production and consumption that is the problem in the United States economy, and the reason that ordinary citizens must gain access to productive capital ownership to improve their economic well-being.
To solve this challenge, several policies must be implemented:
1. Tax reform is needed to incentivize broadened individual ownership of corporations by their employees. As an incentive, provide a tax deduction to corporations for dividend payouts, which would tighten-up the right of each owner to his or her full share of profits, a basic and historic right of private property. It would eliminate double and triple taxes on corporate profits, shifting the burden of taxation to personal incomes after exempting initial incomes that would allow low and middle class citizens not to pay taxes on incomes needed to cover basic living expenses. It will also encourage corporations to finance their growth through the issuance of new full voting, full dividend payout shares for financing their productive capital growth needs through Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) and Capital Homestead Accounts (CHAs). Politically we need to insist that politicians lift barriers to the democratization of future ownership opportunity based on sound principle, rather than redistributive taxation.
2. As increasingly more workers acquire ownership stakes in FUTURE corporate productive capital assets using ESOP financing mechanisms, workers will build second incomes to support their living expenses, which in turn means they will be better “customers with money” to support demand for the products and services that the economy is capable of producing. By reason of the higher marginal spending rate on the part of workers second incomes, more of the additional income earned by the new capitalists (who have many unsatisfied consumer needs and wants) will be spent on consumption than if the income had been earned by those capitalists who now have concentrated the ownership of productive capital exclusively, and who have few, if any, consumer needs and wants. Such broadened incremental consumption will fuel a demand for more consumer products and services, which in turn will provide incentive for greater productive capital investment.
3. For all Americans, the Federal Reverse needs to create an asset-backed currency that can enable every man, woman and child to establish a Capital Homestead Account or “CHA” (a super-IRA or asset tax-shelter for citizens) at their local bank to acquire a growing dividend-bearing stock portfolio to supplement their incomes from work and all other sources of income. The CHA would process an equal allocation of productive credit to every citizen exclusively for purchasing full-dividend payout shares in companies needing funds for growing the economy and private sector jobs for local, national and global markets. The shares would be purchased using essentially interest-free credit wholly backed by projected “future savings” in the form of new productive capital assets as well as the future marketable products and services produced by the newly added technology, renewable energy systems, plant, rentable space and infrastructure added to the economy. Risk of default on each stock acquisition loan would be covered by private sector capital credit risk insurance and, if necessary, government reinsurance, but would not require citizens to reduce their funds for consumption to purchase shares.
4. Reform the tax code such that the tax rate would be a single rate for all incomes from all sources above an established personal exemption level (for example, an exemption of $100,000 for a family of four to meet their ordinary living needs) so that the budget could be balanced automatically and even allow the government to pay off the growing unsustainable long-term debt. The poor would pay the first dollar over their exemption levels as would the stock fund operator and others now earning billions of dollars from capital gains, dividends, rents and other property incomes.
5. As a substitute for inheritance and gift taxes, a transfer tax should be imposed on the recipients whose holdings exceeded $1 million, thus encouraging the super-rich to spread out their monopoly-sized estates to all members of their family, friends, servants and workers who helped create their fortunes, teachers, health workers, police, other public servants, military veterans, artists, the poor and the disabled.
6. Eliminate all tax loopholes and subsidies.
These polices would result in rapid and substantial economic growth with the GDP rate in double digits. As a result of the stimulus effect, more REAL, decent paying job opportunities and further technological advancement would be created while simultaneously broadening private, individual ownership of FUTURE wealth-creating, income-generating productive capital assets, which would support second and primary incomes for ALL Americans.
In this new FUTURE economy, a citizen would start to benefit financially at the time he or she enters the economic world as a labor worker, to become increasingly a capital owner, whose productive capital assets contribute as a non-human worker earning a second income, and at some point to retire as a labor worker and continue to participate in production and to earn income as a capital owner until the day you die.
As we ALL contribute to the building of a FUTURE economy that can support general affluence for EVERY man, woman and child, at some point as the technologies of production further advance there will be far less need for human workers and productive capital asset ownership will become the primary income source for most people. As general affluence becomes more widespread people will be free and economically secure to pursue their creative desires and pleasures, further contributing to the cultural and societal development of the country.
Support the Agenda of The Just Third Way Movement at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797
Support Monetary Justice at http://capitalhomestead.org/page/monetary-justice
Support the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm and http://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm
http://www.nationofchange.org/popular-movement-higher-taxes-now-would-be-story-1373203893
