You have been elected at a very singular moment in American history. You have been elected to begin the process of resuscitating an American middle-class that has been subject to the unfettered license of business leaders and financial moguls for the last thirty years. For decades now, the very rich have benefited from continuing income tax cuts from a one-time high of over 90 percent to an all-time low of 28 percent. Capital gains taxes and corporate taxes have also been so unconscionably low that CEOs and investment bankers have used their financial license to accumulate reckless amounts of capital for themselves and stockholders even as they cut jobs, reduce wages, eliminate benefits, and convert pensions to the 401 (k). At the same time as businesses were booming and a few were drowning in new wealth, the workers no longer reaped any of these rewards. In fact, the so-called entitlements weighing down the federal deficit are programs or agencies that are doing what the leaders of finance and industry have historically refused to do-- reigning in risky investments; working for an industry's long term health and not the short term pay-off; eliminating pollution; making products that are reasonably safe, food that is uncontaminated, and pharmaceuticals that are well-tested before being marketed; ensuring that workers have safe working conditions, monthly income upon retirement, adequate health care, unemployment income when they lose their jobs, and public assistance when they too often fall into poverty. It is time for the top two percent to pay a little more!
The federal government has had to spend trillions, while the top two percent have made their millions and billions relying like spoiled children on the federal government to spend whatever amount necessary to clean up their mess. If it weren't so ignominious, we would almost have to laugh at the way in which the same people whose behavior has compelled the federal government to spend itself into debt, continue to demand a reduction in spending. The Republicans preach that their upper class constituents require less and less financial regulation and taxes, but they do not believe that these same individuals have any other responsibility than making money for themselves and their stockholders. The very rich have forced the federal government into debt and then complain that he government is spending too much. The truth must be told that while government spending does not benefit the upper two percent of Americans, it is their reckless and avaricious business practices which are the proximate cause.
If supply side, trickle down, economics really works, then why does a middle class salary have less buying power today than it did thirty years ago? Why is America forced to have a greater number of two wage earner households than any European country? Why has the typical CEO's salary gone from 40 times the average worker's to 400? Why, over the last 40 years, has the compensation for American workers risen only 10 percent while the companies they work for have realized an 80 percent rise in productivity? Why have big business lobbyists, whose sole job is to entice elected officials into supporting corporate interests, grown from 175 in 1971 to a record 15,137 in 2007, nearly 2,000 of whom are former government officials? Why do Americans own only 40 percent of the nation's housing stock, when we owned 70 percent in 1985? Why do only 18 percent of workers receive employer paid health insurance when 80 percent received this benefit in 1980? Why do only 35 percent of workers receive life-time monthly pensions when 84 percent received them in 1980? Why do the richest one percent of Americans take home 23 percent of the income? Why does this same select group earn more money than the economies of Canada or France? Why, during the Bush II years, did corporate profits rise to their highest level since 1943 while money going toward employee wages fell to its lowest level since 1929? Why have the wages of a worker in Germany risen 30 percent since the 1980s while the wages of American workers have risen only 5 percent? Why, in the last ten years, have U.S. companies hired 2.4 million overseas workers while eliminating the jobs of 2.9 million American workers? Why can so few make so much money? And why can't such incredible corporate profit trickle down the way we were promised it would? The reason lies in the fact that this economic theory was designed and implemented for no other reason than to increase the profits of CEOs, stockholders, and financial institutions. Henry Ford did not have to attend an Ivy League School to understand that the best economic policy to garner profits for owners and investors is to keep workers healthy and happy, for as consumers, they will purchase and increase the demand for the excellent products they help to create. Unfortunately the worker is no longer even an after-thought in what has come to be an "increase profits at any cost" mentality. This is not only immoral, it is not only bad economics, it jeopardizes the freedom that all Americans are guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution-- if the majority of Americans lacks the freedom to earn a decent wage because a select few are taking that right away, then the Constitution is not worth the paper it is written on and America, at least in economic terms, is no longer a free country.
Mr. President, those of us who voted for you did so because we believed that you would right our ship, that you would begin the turn-around that will take back the economic power for the majority which, since the mid 1970s, was actively stripped away by the prevailed few. You won this election in spite of the high price paid to PACs to defeat you. And you will certainly continue to face the tyranny of the plutocrats in the form of their high-priced lobbyists who will promise elected officials anything to solidify the status quo. Let the inordinately wealthy understand that America is not an aristocracy but that it remains a democratic society where the majority rules. Keep your eye on the prize, steeled against the criticism and insult delivered from the right. We have your back because you have promised to have ours.
Sincerely,
David Kuyat, Ph. D.
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