The Republicans in Congress fear anti-tax zealots.  These include Grover Norquist, who has at his disposal a number of billionaires willing to bankroll the defeat of any Republican who dares to violate Norquist’s anti-tax pledge.  They also include the voters of the so-called Tea Party; their initial outrage over bank bailouts has been redirected into anti-government activism by professional operatives hired by Norquist’s billionaires.  It would be fair to say that Norquist’s extremist billionaires own the Republican Party.  As a result, Republicans in Congress demand deficit reduction without tax increases on wealthy individuals or businesses.  If they get their way, the economy will spiral into Depression.

Why?  As a result of high unemployment, shrinking benefits and wages which don’t keep up with the cost of living, American consumers are unable to spend enough to create the demand which will drive businesses to hire more employees and will give banks the confidence to lend.  In addition, $500 billion every year is sent out of the country instead of being spent here because of our trade deficit; that’s a further drag on our economy.  State and local governments can’t take up the slack; instead, they’re cutting expenditures and jobs.  Only economic stimulus by the national government can save the economy.  That requires deficit spending until the recovery is solid and self-sustaining.

A reduction in government spending, as the Republicans demand, will reduce stimulus and be a drag on the economy.  Unemployment will increase, business will stagnate, and government revenues will decrease, thereby undoing the deficit reduction.  Further deficit reduction will simply extend the process in a vicious cycle as every reduction in government spending to reduce the deficit causes a further loss of private income and government revenue, followed by a demand to reduce spending again to avoid an increase in the deficit.

But can government spending which puts money into the hands of the many who are primarily consumers, and which thereby creates jobs, continue or even increase without increasing the deficit?  It can, if taxes are increased enough on great wealth and high incomes.  How much is enough?  I don’t possess the necessary data to calculate that, and it depends on how much stimulus spending will occur anyway.  A minimum of $500 billion per year in stimulus spending is needed merely to balance the loss from the trade deficit; more is needed if we are to recover economically.  A number of economists have estimated that a $1.2 billion increase in stimulus is needed.

Until now, all of the discussions on the revenue side have been about taxing incomes and maybe financial transactions, but none about taxing wealth.  It shouldn’t be off the table.  When we tax real estate at the state and local level, we are taxing property.  Other forms of property shouldn’t be exempt.  Real estate taxes pay for the services which presumably benefit the owners of those properties.  Well, the owners of businesses and of financial assets benefit from many public services, too, such as national defense, law enforcement, education, infrastructure and laws which protect property ownership and contractual obligations.  Therefore, it’s perfectly legitimate to have a property tax on forms of wealth other than real estate.  Actually, the fact that real property is taxed while most other forms of property aren’t is a leftover from earlier times in which real property was the primary form of wealth.  That ended with the industrial revolution.  Now the ownership of businesses and financial assets is the prime source of wealth.  It’s long past time for the system of taxation to catch up with economic realities.

It’s not necessary to have a property tax on the modest savings of the middle class.  A tax on non-real estate wealth in excess of a couple million dollars will generate significant revenues, and it will chip away at the present drift toward a hereditary and entrenched plutocracy which corners both economic and political power.

The bottom line is that, by increasing taxes on the highest incomes and by initiating taxes on excess wealth which is not already taxed, it will be possible to have our cake and eat it too: reduce the national government’s budget deficit while retaining and perhaps increasing those expenditures which enable consumer spending, generate jobs and rescue the economy.  The increase in government revenues from a revitalized economy will further reduce the deficit.

The right-wing argument that today’s deficit spending must stop because it is leaving a debt for our descendants fails to account for the damage our descendants will suffer from a collapsed national economy, with rampant unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, inferior education and health care, street begging and crime.  The Republican approach is a lose-lose game: either run up our descendants’ debt or leave them with a crippled country.  A win-win game is a better alternative.  We can have our cake and eat it too.  We can reduce the debt we’re leaving to our descendants while revitalizing the country which they will inherit.




Bill McKibben is the world’s most significant voice in confronting the crisis generated by global warming... Last month McKibben spoke ... in the prelude to a conference on the subject sponsored by Progressive Christians Uniting and held at the Presbyterian Church in Claremont. Several hundred religious activists from around the area met for two days to hear world authorities on the subject, to plan specific actions and to engage in services of worship. McKibben is an active Methodist layman and teaches a Sunday School class at his local Vermont congregation.  He also preached Sunday morning at Claremont’s largest protestant church.



James Hansen, a NASA scientist, recently wrote, “If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adopted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggests that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.” In response, McKibben has generated a worldwide movement centered around the “350” focus, believing that the currently verified 410 ppm.. is deadly.  The movement’s short-term goal is the reduction of the use of fossil fuels, while forcing the producers to pay for the environmental degradation they generate. These atmospheric insults are simply part of the cost of doing business.

There is now all but a unanimous conclusion by the scientific community that the carbon spewed into the air has already raised the earth’s temperature by more than a degree. While warmer air holds more moisture than cooler air, it falls to the ground unevenly.  This means floods more severe than have ever been recorded, and droughts that disable entire nations. Vermont and Thailand have been inundated, while Texas and Sub-Saharan Africa are increasingly parched.


One wonders why saving the planet from the inevitable destruction caused by global warming is not at the top of everyone’s agenda.  Yet there is a sturdy resistance to taking any of the steps necessary to halt our rush to the precipice.  Among the several states, California has generated the greatest concern leading to legislative action. The State has its own version of “cap and trade.”  But there is opposition even to the small steps taken. What is the contrary argument? “It’s bad for business.”



The lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal of October 31 makes the negative case.  It cites, among other things, that the Western States Petroleum Association calculates these new laws will cost … stockholders $540 million in the first two years.  In that period Conoco-Phillips alone will earn 14 billion! While there is obviously a trade-off between climate change policies and economic competitiveness—that translates “profits”—the increasing corporate control of every aspect of American society makes it difficult to deal with what may be the most critical issue facing this planet.  Most American politicians are now indebted to corporate money. That means keeping the cash coming trumps the need to reduce atmospheric pollution. One wonders if both corporations, and the politicians in their pockets, would rather have us go off the cliff into environmental oblivion, than to take the simplest steps in controlling global warming.



Of course saving the planet will come at a cost. We will have to develop new sources of energy, which means, in the interim, some jobs will go out of style.  We will be paying higher costs for the fuels we now consume.  We may need a tax on all carbon generation to cover the costs involved in dealing with the destruction now caused in the air we breathe and the atmosphere which controls our weather. These costs are already build into our economy.

The Wall Street Journal complains that even these simple steps now on California’s books, are futile since the rest of the world is not taking similar measures.  So California should do nothing at all. I am hardly compelled by the argument that I should continue to drink poison because everybody else is gulping it down. Paying $6 a gallon for gasoline would be a bitter pill, but that is probably what it would take to throttle our thirst.