The Ming Report

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

July 29, 2004 - At the end of the second year of the Bush Presidency the individual income of reported to the Internal Revenue Service declines. Adjusted for inflation the Individual Adjusted Gross Income of America taxpayers fell 9.2 percent from what it had been in 2000. 2002 marked the second straight decline in individual incomes since – well, since America began keeping records. That reduction in income came mostly from the upper income levels as the stock market slide depressed stock values and cut into dividend income and the decline in interest rates cut into the return on bonds. At the same time, the IRS tells us, the revenue from the individual income tax fell, not by 9% but by 18.2% as a result of the concentration of the benefits of the Bush tax cuts at the upper levels of the income spectrum - the safety net for the superrich.

That IRS report released yesterday validated the Republicans’ proposition that the super rich pay the largest portion of the individual income tax though simple logic had already told us that we should expect that folks gathering in the lion’s share of individual income would owe the lion’s share of a tax burden stated as a percentage of that income. It also validated the Democrats’ proposition that the Bush tax cuts were targeted to benefit the super rich at the expense of fiscal health of the nation.

Point out those simple facts and you are accused of engaging in class warfare by those who occupy the top tier in our supposedly classless society. I agree, we are sunk in the depths of class warfare – a contest in which the occupants of the economic sky boxes have been set against the folks in the bleachers – a contest between privilege and promises; between those whose economic decline forces them to decide whether to but a third luxury car to keep at their third vacation home and those who must decide how many meals to miss to stretch their reduced paycheck through next payday; between those for whom Sunday has become a day of golf and jet-setting and those for whom the Day of Rest has become a day of worry. The Bush economic policies have been the Pearl Harbor that launched class warfare between those who already got theirs and those who hoped for a fair share of the American Dream.

In the struggle between the boardroom and the factory floor the stakes are easy to measure. $9,000.00 is the benchmark. That is the difference between the annual income earned by the men and women who used to have one of those 2.3 Million manufacturing jobs that the Bush economy exported to China and the wages they collect from one or the new jobs at Wal-Mart that the Bush economy is beginning to create. It doesn’t seem like much – not even 15% of the cost of a new BMW. $9,000 won’t even cover the annual mortgage payments for an average priced home. It will barely cover the annual health insurance premiums for a couple and their three children and it won’t send one of those kids to college but it is the difference between being able to pursue the American Dream for your children and having to give it up.

So yes, we are sunk into the depths of class warfare in America and it is a war between those who cherish the American Dream and those who would deny it to those for whom it is not yet reality. It is time to choose sides and in this election answer the question. Which side are you on?