Tax the Plutocrats!

It's time to confront the central obstacle blocking a new progressive politics: the Democratic Party's abject fear of the truth that new taxes are going to be needed if the party is ever to offer--and finance--a dramatic program capable of mobilizing large numbers of working Americans, white, black and brown. The way forward is to go on the offensive by sharply delineating a strategy targeting America's plutocratic top 1-2 percent elite, plus the corporations they largely own. Changes in income and wealth patterns in recent years make it possible to do this without simultaneously alienating middle-income and middle-class suburban voters.

A progressive program worth fighting for would begin with fixing--improving, not reducing--Social Security; it would move on to prescription drugs, major reform of the healthcare system, support for broad-based college tuition assistance, serious daycare provision, an expansion of the earned-income tax credit. Public transportation, environmental and other infrastructure needs are also huge, between $60 billion and $100 billion a year in recent estimates. A serious effort might also add some tax relief for middle- and low-income families.

The first step is to stop compromising at the outset, thus eliminating any hope of offering something powerful that we can mobilize around over the long haul. Progressives must challenge the idea that the United States, the richest nation in the world, must always be the poor sister among the advanced nations--that our nonmilitary public sector, at 29.7 percent of GDP, must always lag behind Britain's (35.8 percent), Germany's (43 percent), France's (44.8 percent) and, of course, that of countries like Sweden, at 50 percent.

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