Obama: No, he won’t unless…

Really?

In the last decade, the average income of the bottom 90% of all working Americans actually declined.  The top 1% saw their income rise by an average of more than a quarter of a million dollars each.  And that’s who needs to pay less taxes?  They want to give people like me a two hundred thousand dollar tax cut that’s paid for by asking thirty three seniors to each pay six thousand dollars more in health costs?   That’s not right, and it’s not going to happen as long as I’m President…

In December, I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it was the only way I could prevent a tax hike on middle-class Americans.  But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society.  And I refuse to renew them again…

My budget calls for limiting itemized deductions for the wealthiest 2% of Americans – a reform that would reduce the deficit by $320 billion over ten years.  But to reduce the deficit, I believe we should go further.  That’s why I’m calling on Congress to reform our individual tax code so that it is fair and simple – so that the amount of taxes you pay isn’t determined by what kind of accountant you can afford.

– Excerpt from US President Barak Obama’s April 13 speech on his country’s US$14.3 trillion government deficit (if private and corporate debt is included, the national debt is $55.3 trillion).

Woah! What’s that? Is it the surprise return of Yes-We-Can Obama who instantly morphed into Yes-We-Can-Continue-To-Serve-The Rich Obama after his 2008 election to the US presidency?

I wouldn’t hold your breadth.

Obama had to acknowledge the gross reality of life in US that was summed up in the pithy May 2011 Vanity Fair headline: “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%“. The article, by Joseph Stiglitz, revealed:

“The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow.”

It was salt in the wounds of the 43.6 million in the US who now live in poverty, and nineteen million of these have annual incomes less than one-half of the poverty level. For them the GFC hasn’t ended even while Wall Street’s bankers have resumed giving themselves multi-million dollar bonuses.

So Obama had to acknowledge this truth. But he added that he was open to compromise with the Republican-controlled US Congress.

In the absence of sustained mass pressure from the majority of US people, on past record Obama will not deliver on his latest promises to significantly reverse the make-the-filthy-rich-even-richer policies that his administration continued from its Republican predecessor.

Could such “game-changing” movement arise in the US? It can, if the struggle of the working people of Wisconsin against cutbacks in that state can be generalised. When that happens, the US will really become the “land of the free” and a real beacon of liberty to people around the world.

Struggling for real change from within the “belly of the beast” is ardous, as we know at Green Left Weekly. But it is a necessary struggle that Green Left is firmly committed to. We know that without system change in the world’s wealthy nations, war, oppression, hunger and environmental destruction pose a grave threat to human survival.

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A people’s budget would tax profits not slash welfare & services

Placard at April 12 rally in Sydney comparing Australias $32 billion a year military spending to the threatened $400 million allocated to medical research. Photo by Peter Boyle.

Today, the polls show that a majority in Australia think that the corporate rich are “not paying their share” but one day a majority will understand that their obscene wealth is not theirs at all.

As the May federal budget approaches, both Labor PM Julia Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott have gone on on a welfare-recipient bashing spree.  Exploiting the well-worn and reactionary “dole bludger” stereotype, they are softening us up for budget cuts to welfare and other social services.

But this sadly predictable spectacle is not washing with most people, according to the findings of a recent Essential Report survey. A majority surveyed (63%) want taxes increased for big corporations and tax breaks for high income earners removed (51%). Only a small minority support welfare cuts and more would prefer the military budget to be cut first.

If we had a “people’s budget” in this country — one that reflects the wishes of the majority today — it would increase the taxes on the big companies that are raking in massive profits, and on the rich minority that monopolise the income from these profits.

Instead we have a Labor government taking aim at the poorest and most disadvantaged people in our society (many suffering severe disabilities) and threatening to cut the relatively small funds ($400  million) allocated to  medical research.

Thousands of medical research workers, patients and other supported rallied around the country on April 12 against cuts to this often life-saving research. Some of the protesters in the Sydney rally had made placards which contrasted the tiny amount of federal money spent on medical research with the massive $32 billion spent each year on the military. That’s about $87 million a day!

The federal government also spends $17.2 billion a year (2008-9 figure) in the form of subsidies and tax breaks to business, a lot of which goes to boosting the profits of environmentally and socially destructive companies like the coal mining and car companies, according to estimates by the Productivity Commission.

While giant mining companies are raking in billions of dollars of profit from the current minining boom, which is the biggest in Australian history, the Gillard Labor government gave away an estimated $60 billion in taxes on mining company super profits over the next ten years through its back down on the mining super profits tax proposed by the previous Rudd Labor government.

As mining profits have spiralled upwards, the share of these profits paid in tax and royalties in Australia has fallen by more than a third of what it was in 1999 according to Treasury calculations published in May 2010. It is no wonder that the two richest people in Australia are mining billionaires Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest and Gina Rhinehart.

There is a growing public understanding that we have been cheated by both Labor and Coalition governments that have slavishly served the obscenely rich minority and helped them get even richer.

Just two years after people all around the world watched trillions of dollars worth of public funds being used to bail out big banks which were nearly brought down because of their own greedy and speculative behaviour, they have seen the CEOs of the same banks reward themselves with massive pay increases and bonuses.

Imagine the uproar if a government dared to follow the wishes of the majority and started seriously taxing the profits of the big companies and the billionaires. The politicians of the rich minority would call it “unAustralian”, “subversive” and “extremist”. The big business media would drop their feigned support for democracy and bay for blood. And the rich will threaten to take “their” capital and run.

But it really is not “theirs” to take and run.

The disgusting sight of Labor and Coalition governments attacking the already miserable entitlements of the unemployed and people on disability pensions, while boosting the profits of the corporate rich through tax cuts, subsidies and by keeping their workers wages down, is only a small part the robbery. The wealth of the rich is not the fruit of their own hard work but the result of a systematic appropriation of the wealth created by the work of others, by paying the workers they employ less than the value of what they produce. This is the day-in-day-out systematic theft carried out under capitalism. The rich get their wealth by exploiting others and by robbing the earth, then use these same ill-gotten gains to exploit even more people and further vandalise the environment.

Today, the polls show that a majority in Australia think that the corporate rich are “not paying their share” but one day a majority will understand that their obscene wealth is not theirs at all.

April 12 rally in Sydney against expected budget cuts to medical research funding. Photo by Peter Boyle.