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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Hello All
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Images of Thom
At Mondragon - both the mountain and the cooperative city - in Spain (written about in "Threshold" book)
From Screwed:
"If we are going to live in a Democracy, we need to have a healthy middle class. Thom Hartmann shows us how the ‘cons’ have wronged this country, and tells us what needs to be done to reclaim what it is to be American."
From Screwed:
"I think many of us recognize that for all but the wealthiest, life in America is getting increasingly hard. Screwed explores why, showing how this is no accidental process, but rather the product of conscious political choices, choices we can change with enough courage and commitment. Like all of Thom’s great work, it helps show us the way forward."
From Unequal Protection, 2nd Edition:
"If you wonder why and when giant corporations got the power to reign supreme over us, here’s the story."
