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Mintz on Fundamental Fairness
The Founding Fathers said in the Preamble to the Constitution that in seeking "to form a more perfect Union," a fundamental goal of "We the people of the United States" was to "promote the general welfare." Corporate welfare, denounced across the political spectrum, costs the taxpayers about $125 billion a year.
Does corporate welfare promote the general welfare or the private welfare, including Enron's, Halliburton's, and that of many of the country's largest and most profitable multinationals?
One of eight Americans — 35.9 million — lived in poverty last year. They included nearly 13 million children and nearly 4 million single mothers. The trend is up: 1.4 million more Americans were below the poverty line in 2003 than in 2002. Children are more likely to be poor today than 30 years ago.
Would ending poverty do more or less than tax breaks for the wealthy and the middle class to promote the general welfare — a chief goal of the Framers of the Constitution?
The Commerce Department says that virtually all of the economic gain of the last 20 years has gone to less than top 5 percent of Americans. The middle class — defined as everybody below the top 5 percent — has a lower share of the nation's wealth and income than it had 20 years ago. Of total income in 2001, the top 20 percent of households received more than half, while the share earned by households in the middle was the lowest in a half-century. This disparity will likely be increased by the latest round of tax reductions.
Is the widening chasm between the very rich and everyone else healthy for our democracy?
Investment income is exempted from Social Security and Medicare taxes.
Should it be?
CEOs of large U.S. corporations earned 42 times as much as their average workers in 1980. They've been earning at least 450 times as much in recent years. The tax code now allows a company to deduct "reasonable" pay — salary plus bonus — from taxable income and caps the deduction at $1 million. This forces rank-and-file taxpayers to subsidize over-the-top executive pay.
Would you favor legislation to change the definition of "reasonable" to, say, 50 or 60 times the salary of a company's lowest-paid pull-time worker?
Since 1998, Congress has raised the salaries of the president from $175,400 to $400,000 and of its members from $136,700 to $158,100, plus generous benefits and perks. Since 1996, the minimum wage has remained at $5.15 an hour. A minimum-wage worker employed full-time throughout 2003 earned $8,510 less than a family of four needed just to reach the average poverty level. If the minimum wage since the late 1960s had kept pace with inflation, income for a year's work would still be $3,810 below the poverty line for a four-member family.
Would you urge Congress to raise the minimum wage, and if you would, by how much?
What are the blessings of freedom for Americans who don't have enough to eat or a decent place to live?
The estate tax, which foes call the "death tax," applies to a single-person's estate only if it's worth $1 million or more, and to a couple's estate only if it's worth $2 million or more. That's why it kicks in for only two of every 100 Americans.
Why repeal the estate tax when repeal would do nothing for 98 out of every 100 Americans? If it is repealed, wouldn't it be the 98 percent that would make up for the lost revenues?
Considering that we tax many necessities of life, often including food, should we tax financial transactions, too?
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