Pregled posta

When (as a child) I asked my rigidly conservative father about the tax brackets he was always juggling, he commented that progressive (high) tax brackets were necessary to counter greed - which he did consider a human vice that insidiously corrupts even the best of people, even if they try to make a conscious decision not to let that happen. He saw laws as necessary to inhibit man's most self-destructive tendencies - and stood by his high moral standards. I must agree that limiting temptation is the only way to effectively guide the behavior of moral law-abiding citizens - and the failure of our society since the higher tax-brackets have been eliminated is proof of the validity of his comments. I only wish more conservatives would admit that they've allowed themselves to be manipulated and corrupted by greed - and that it is indeed a decadent vice. The war machine is fueled by the opportunities to amass obscene fortunes - which in turn disenfranchises growing numbers of ordinary people, leading to eventual unrest and social breakdown. I'm sure his own family's experiences in Tzarist Russia led to this philosophy - the bloody revolts and purges of the Russian revolution were sagely forecast by his father (and grandmother) and led to their emigrating to the US while their fortunes were still intact. It may take a while to get to that degree of misery in this country - the post-WWII reprieve staved off the impending decline of American society - perhaps the only reason socialism did not take hold here. However, if reason and logic do not prevail, we are doomed to this disastrous fate - and those of us from the previous educated and higher social classes will suffer the same consequences that befell the educated and landed classes in Russia and China. Once the rebellion starts, it seems anyone connected with the previous (capitalist) regime is considered a legitimate target - much as we might deny the possibility of a Pol-Pot style massacre, we are not immune to such a phenomena. Stable classes can only exist so long as the status quo is maintained - and that's not what's happening - wealth and power are being increasingly accumulated by a small group, and they're not necessarily educated - the rise of uneducated thugs with sub-normal intellects in places of power is always a bad omen, whether their name is Stalin, Saddam Hussein, or George Bush. They also tend to be secretive and paranoid - after all, they are unable to understand why things are not going as they fantasized and why other people oppose them so vehemently - and they never consider that their own stupidity is the culprit in all their failures. Meanwhile, the disastrous policies they ignorantly pursue cause real harm - severe pain, suffering, misery, and even death - for those they imagined they were helping. They can't understand the ingratitude of their victims - such as the Iraqis or impoverished Americans - because they can't imagine they're to blame! Instead of changing their disastrous policies - the obvious solution to any intelligent person - they impose a police state to repress dissent (blaming the victims) and forge ahead with ever more vicious attacks on their perceived 'enemies' - the list, of course, keeps growing - as do the frequent purges. We've already seen the beginning of such tactics in this administration - anyone who dares speak the truth is branded a traitor, and attacked with character assassination. You can be sure that real assassinations will follow if the fanatasy fails to play out as imagined by such delusional tyrants - history is replete with such tales of misery and woe for the hapless citizens of such regimes - the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, etc. The growing inequity in this country - combined with unprecedented military power - is a recipe for global catastrophe on an unimaginable scale. That is the real threat to all of humanity - not a few nutty 'terrorists' with their own crazy fantasies, who could indeed be marginalized with good cooperative international police work. The only way to end this relentless march to madness is to reinstate steeply progressive taxes - indeed, to punish not capitalism, but avarice. I cannot imagine any other system besides capitalism that would work - and I do believe this country was founded by men who understood the threat - but untrammeled capitalism is doomed to failure. The success of American society in the post-WWII era of FDR's New Deal is proof that there is indeed an equitable solution - one in which all can prosper without destroying the very class system that drives the most ambitious to aspire to greater heights. We do have the solution - we just have to impliment those restrictions that discouraged the few truly avaricious from killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Posted by: Sandy Lambrecht at July 10, 2004 11:01 PM