Raise Taxes!

The world economy is a farce, maybe that's why year after year the World Economic Forum in Davos is such a laughing stock. This year was not different until one of the discussion panels was set on fire by a young Dutch historian...

_{source: Wikimedia Commons}

What's so frustrating is this: we live in Utopia, Eden or whatever your favorite paradise looks like. Really, we've advanced so much that we're literally able to never want for anything again. Since the industrial- and digital revolutions there are no shortages left for mankind: we have enough houses, enough food, enough cars, PC's and TV's for everyone, all seven and a half billion of us. I'm not exaggerating here, it's the paradoxical nature of capitalism that prevents this Eden to be realized; we all know the cities with homeless people next to scores of empty buildings, the parking lots full of cars that are never sold, that the food we throw away in the west could easily feed all hungry people in the world. The wealth is there, it's just the distribution of it that's f$%k'd up.

The dominant libertarian politics that have reigned supreme since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 have taken us in a direction of endless tax-cuts for the rich and the producers, with the fable of "trickle-down economics" as an excuse, and the constant warnings of not taxing the rich too much because else they might not produce anymore jobs... I hope I don't have to explain why this is a fable, and that we all see with our own eyes that the rich have been getting richer, while moving the jobs to countries where wages are still low. The wealth inequality today is worse than during the heydays of the Roman Empire.

The everlasting tax-cuts for the rich, coupled with their uncanny ability to hire whole teams of lawyers to figure out to avoid paying what little taxes they still have to pay, has resulted in a top 1% that's insanely rich. Corporations operate under a singular goal, which is to maximize profits for their shareholders, which has resulted in the one-sided affair of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer; the nature of the capitalist ideology itself rewards selfishness and greed, so all wealth lands in the laps of the greedy, it's really that simple. To bring back justice and balance capitalism necessitates heavy re-distribution of wealth. But that's a taboo, wealth redistribution is for communists, right?

Wrong. It was a breath of fresh air when during the WEF this year, Dutch historian Rutger Bregman reminded us where the real problem lies, namely that the wealthy don't pay their fair share of taxes. He reminded us that during America's biggest growth period, during the 1950s, the top tax rate was more than 90%; billionaires paid 90 cents on the dollar. For years this rate was maintained at 70%, until Reagan put an end to it and started calling the government "the problem"... Here's the discussion, enjoy:

_{Davos 2019: Historian Rutger Bregman berates billionaires at World Economic Forum over tax avoidance}

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