Time To Turn the Social Safety Net Into a Floor No American Can Fall Through
By Thom Hartmann A...
The republicans have brought us a situation where banksters pay 15% income tax and anyone rich enough to create an LLC pays 21%.We need to raise the top income tax rate back to where it was before Reagan, between 74% and 91%. And right away we need to have the rich to pay what plumbers pay. And then we need to establish a floor below which Americans can't fall.
What should that floor be made of? Ingredients that already exist are healthcare "ERs and Medicaid", housing "section 9", nutrition "food stamps", income (earned income tax credit), & education "free primary". Let's strengthen these floors and make them universally available and extend the EITC with Universal Basic Income.
► Are You Taxed More Than the Rich?
► Are the Billionaires Destroying the Middle Classes?
None of this is radical - we're ALREADY doing it all. But we're doing it in a patchwork way; it needs to turn from a "net" that catches some but not others into a "floor" that supports us all. Social Security (safety in retirement) being strengthened rounds out the things that both Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt called for.
-Thom
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At Mondragon - both the mountain and the cooperative city - in Spain (written about in "Threshold" book)
Mueller's favorite place to pray (written about in "Prophet's Way"), and the roof of the room where the Last Supper is reputed to have happened.
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