Van Jones and MoveOn have been trying to gather progressives under one umbrella. Recently the asked everyone interested to contribute ideas and have distilled them into about 10 things that progressives need to come together on and to try to get politicians to focus on.
News article here: Progressive Groups Unveil 'Contract For The American Dream' | HuffPost Latest News
Starts off on a bad foot with Item #1 - While civic infrastructure projects are OK, they do nothing to provide sustainable job development or growth and are entirely dependent upon government funding.
I like the list very much. I’m too cynical to think that this will really go anywhere, but if it did, that would be awesome.
I disagree that #1 is a bad step. Investing in America’s infrastructure is crucial to more than just jobs creation, but it would have nice effects there as well.
Seeing as most businesses that move into an area usually want upgrades to the infrastructure as a condition to opening shop, I have no problem with #1, and neither should anyone who claims to be pro-business. You think business runs away because they don’t like the tax structure. Imagine how many businesses you’d attract if you told them - “Oh yeah, if you move in, you’ll have to pay to add another lane to the interstate to handle your traffic.”
Boy, I sure don’t believe that. Infrastructure development, roads, bridges, broadband set up and other such, is one of the basic things that government SHOULD do to provide long-term development. It’s altering the playing field to allow the private sector to build more and better jobs and growth.
The point behind it isn’t the construction jobs, though those can be useful for a short-term boost, it’s what the business community can do with the new conditions. Improve those and some bright boy or girl will figure out how to do more with the new opportunities.
We need to get the infrastructure built some time. Why not now when labor and financing (record low interest rates) is cheap. This makes sense even from a business stand point. If it produces temporary jobs that provide enough trickle up stimulus to increase demand and get the economy humming then all the better.
The jobs from infrastructure upgrade aren’t supposed to be permanent. The infrastructure lasts, and the short-term jobs they create provide stimulus.
While I don’t disagree with any of the points on the list, thematically, #10 is a bit of a mess. Stopping voter suppression and immigration reform are both things that need to be done, but I don’t see that they’re particularly related. By contrast, points 1 and 2 could easily enough be combined.
Point 9, the tax on Wall Street trades, looks interesting, but I’m surprised I’ve never seen it proposed or discussed before. Anyone have a link to where it’s been discussed?
I also notice that there isn’t any mention there of civil rights for gays. We’re winning that fight, but it isn’t won yet. This is no time to give up.
I would say this appears to be more of an economic document than a rights document. Note it also makes no mention of drugs and various issues surrounding that subject. Even more to the point, if a progressive movement could successfully secure even half of those points, it would go a long ways in encouraging some rationality in discussions not related to the economy.
Yet, by and large the document is full of great goals but short on details. A 1% tax on all market trades is interesting, but how much would it generate? I am all for creating 21st century energy jobs, however part of that discussion must be a well-engineered nuclear power solution. See item 10, I am liberal who believes corporations have no constitutional rights but I also do not like the idea that anybody who hits our shores and doesn’t leave is deserving of citizenship rather than a trip home. Tell me how these goals will be accomplished. I can live with compromise, but let’s have a plan.
Here’s the list (spoilered for space considerations):
[spoiler]1. INVEST IN AMERICA’S INFRASTRUCTURE.
Rebuild our crumbling bridges, dams, levees, ports, water and sewer lines, railways, roads and public transit. We must invest in high-speed Internet and a modern, energy-saving electric grid. These investments will create good jobs and rebuild America. To help finance these projects, we need national and state infrastructure banks.
CREATE 21ST-CENTURY ENERGY JOBS.
We should invest in American businesses that can power our country with innovative technologies like wind turbines, solar panels, geothermal systems, hybrid and electric cars, and next-generation batteries. And we should put Americans to work making our homes and buildings energy efficient. We can create good, green jobs in America, address the climate crisis, and build the clean energy economy.
INVEST IN PUBLIC EDUCATION.
We should provide universal access to early childhood education, make school funding equitable, invest in high-quality teachers, and build safe, well-equipped school buildings for our students. A high-quality education system, from universal preschool to vocational training and affordable higher education, is critical for our future and can create badly needed jobs now.
OFFER MEDICARE FOR ALL .
We should expand Medicare so it’s available to all Americans, and reform it to provide even more cost-effective, quality care. The Affordable Care Act is a good start and we must implement it – but it’s not enough. We can save trillions of dollars by joining every other industrialized country – paying much less for health care while getting the same or better results.
MAKE WORK PAY.
Americans have a right to fair minimum and living wages, to organize and collectively bargain, to enjoy equal opportunity and to earn equal pay for equal work. Corporate assaults on these rights bring down wages and benefits for all of us. They must be outlawed.
SECURE SOCIAL SECURITY.
Keep Social Security sound, and strengthen the retirement, disability, and survivors’ protections Americans earn through their hard work. Pay for it by removing the cap on the Social Security tax, so that upper-income people pay into Social Security on all they make, just like the rest of us.
RETURN TO FAIRER TAX RATES.
End, once and for all, the Bush-era tax giveaways for the rich, which the rest of us – or our kids – must pay eventually. Also, we must outlaw corporate tax havens and tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas. Lastly, with millionaires and billionaires taking a growing share of our country’s wealth, we should add new tax brackets for those making more than $1 million each year.
END THE WARS AND INVEST AT HOME.
Our troops have done everything that’s been asked of them, and it’s time to bring them home to good jobs here. We’re sending $3 billion each week overseas that we should be investing to rebuild America.
TAX WALL STREET SPECULATION.
A tiny fee of 1/20th of 1% on each Wall Street trade would raise tens of billions of dollars annually with little impact on actual investment. This would reduce speculation, “flash trading,” and outrageous bankers’ bonuses – and we’d have a lot more money to spend on Main Street job creation.
STRENGTHEN DEMOCRACY.
We need clean, fair elections – where no one’s right to vote can be taken away, and where money doesn’t buy you your own member of Congress. We must ban anonymous political influence, slam shut the lobbyists’ revolving door in D.C. and publicly finance elections. Immigrants who want to join in our democracy deserve a clear path to citizenship. We must stop giving corporations the rights of people when it comes to our elections. And we must ensure our judiciary’s respect for the Constitution. Together, we will reclaim our democracy to get our country back on track.[/spoiler]
I’d call it a pretty good list of goals. The absence of support for nuclear power–which I believe will be necessary–from number 2 is disappointing, but not surprising.
Points 2 and 7 sort of contradict each other - they will reduce tax breaks for corporations, and then restore them if the corporations create jobs.
There are no hard figures, so it is hard to take it seriously. They are going to create a new tax bracket for those making more than a million a year. I wonder how much they think they will make from that.
Rescinding the Bush tax cuts just for millionaires is supposed to net about $32 billion. Add a new tax bracket on top of that.
Where did you see that? All I could find was a rather vague reference to tens of billions of dollars.
Overall, it’s the usual liberal wish list. I think they are hoping for the same success of the Contract with America, but that was specific. This is not noticeably different from what the less realistic wing of the Democratic party has been wishing for for these last twenty years or so.
The bills that went along with the CwA, yes. The Contract itself, though, was about as vague as this one.
And anyone who claims they can make a prediction more precise than “tens of billions” for the trading tax is lying to you. Such a tax would, of course, decrease the amount of the activity it would target most strongly, but precisely how much it would decrease it can only be guessed. And so the writers of the contract gave an honest estimate, instead of dishonest false precision.
And someone needs to point out that, paradoxically, the more you tax the rich, you’re liable to generate less income. Creating a new tax bracket for those over $1M won’t generate the kinds of revenues they’re expecting.
You know the interesting thing about paradoxes? They’re not true. The reason that “taxing the rich more decreases income” seems paradoxical is that it is.
It doesn’t strike me as dishonest to actually try to come up with some figures that are more precise than “tens of billions”.
This contract is proposing a shitload of new spending, during a time when the US public debt is larger than the GDP and the current deficit is somewhere around $1.6 trillion. If they can’t come up with a reasonable way to be sure they are not simply jacking the deficit even higher than its current, unsustainable level, I for one am not willing to sign off on anything.
Gee whiz - a bunch of liberals want to spend money like drunken sailors, and change the subject when somebody asks hard questions. Gosh, I’ve never seen that on the SDMB before.
That’s something that scares me more than this Contract full of warmed-over liberal hyena vomit - the notion that there is no upper limit to taxation. No matter what, the feds can just help themselves, and there will always be more for the grabbing.
It’s a good thing that four of the bullet points are ways of reducing the deficit, then. In the short term, anyway. In the long term, most of them would do so.
Total traded shares on the NYSE on Monday: 10,493,491,912
Total traded shares over a 1 year period of 250 trading days based on this number: 2,728,307,897,120.00
Total tax generated at $.0005 per trade: $1,364,153,948.56
Now, this makes quite a number of assumptions. Some of which I’ll walk through. First, the total traded shares counts shares both bought and sold. So if every trade is taxed, this is the true number. If not, you halve it.
Second, for the purposes of this calculation, I assumed Monday’s numbers to be an average. They very well may not be. But it was the first number I found.
Third, I really don’t know if they’re wanting a $.0005 tax set per trade or a .05% tax on the cost of trading or a .05% tax on the total value of the trade. Obviously using the latter two, you’d increase your totals significantly.
Fourth, I’m obviously not factoring in a decrease in trade that may occur with this tax, nor am I factoring in the costs to monitor and collect this tax.
Fifth, this is just the NYSE’s numbers. There’s a lot more out there.
But all that taken into consideration…yeah. $1.3 billion dollars through a tax you wouldn’t even notice is there. And probably a heck of a lot more.
I don’t know. Put together, it seems like they’ll get rid of tax breaks for companies shipping jobs oversees, and give tax breaks to companies that create jobs here. Seems to fit together.