Surviving Capitalism (Not) : The "Budget Crisis" is the Product of a Tax Avoidance Scam By The Very Rich

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, March 3, 2011

The "Budget Crisis" is the Product of a Tax Avoidance Scam By The Very Rich

by Richard Clark from OpEd News.

...a rather vicious cycle has been at work for years: Reduced taxes on the rich leave them with ever more money to influence politicians and politics. This influence wins them further tax reductions, which gives them still more money to put to political use. Then, when the loss of tax revenue from the rich worsens already strained government budgets, the rich and powerful press politicians to cut public services and government jobs and not even debate a return to the higher taxes the rich used to pay.

That is the core nature of capitalism--the rich become richer and the poor become poorer. If we do nothing, we will enter a nightmarish world where there will exist tiny islands of the rich who live behind well guarded gated communities amidst vast oceans of the poor governed by a police state.

It must be understood that the system not only exploits working people, but also more dangerously exploits the Earth's ecosystem. The latter will simply not tolerate this for much longer. As we pass many ecological tipping points, we will see more and more extreme weather, and this will accelerate over time until the climate will no longer sustain human life.

If we are going to survive as human species, we must immediately figure out a way to change the system into something that is socially just and sustainable within the limits of our planet's ecosystem.