But early morning (Occupy Boston, part 2)

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison: This is Part 2 of our guest post from  John Hess of UMass/Boston, reporting on Occupy Boston.]

Occupy Boston signs of freedom and the movement
Photo by Twp. Used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 unported license.

When you hear chants like “How do you solve the deficit? End the wars and tax the rich!” and “They got bailed out, we got sold out,” you are in the company of people with a very good understanding of the current situation–neatly summed up in the chant “We are the 99%!”

Where all this will lead, we don’t yet know.  But there seems to be a growing wave of discontent that first showed itself in Wisconsin. I read that demonstrations of support for Occupy Wall Street have occurred in over 100 cities and that mini-occupations like Occupy Boston are spreading, even to Europe.

What drives this movement is clear to me:  it’s common sense based on the obvious fact that most of us are not being treated fairly by this economy, this social system.  We work when we can get a job, but are not properly rewarded.

Reports show that real incomes for most Americans have dropped significantly since the recession officially ended.  Education (coupled with hard work) has been the traditional path to a better life for most Americans, yet educational costs are now staggering.

My university, UMass Boston, has seen state funding drop from some 77% of the budget in 1985 to around 26% this year.  The shortfall has been made up by heavily increased student fees, which are now over $9,000 of the approximately $12,000 it costs in-state students to attend our commuter school.  Why?  In large part because we will not tax the rich or the corporations. (I have been told that the head of GE pays less income tax than his personal assistant.  Even if he doesn’t, I’ll bet he doesn’t pay much.)

There is much cause for optimism.  A generation, no, a nation, seems finally to be waking up, even though it is but early morning and we are still rubbing the sleep from our eyes.  Maybe another slap of cold water will bring us fully awake to seize the new day that is dawning.

John Hess, Senior Lecturer in English and American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Morality and taxes

"Tax Dollars" poster
Poster by Eric Gulliver, 2011

With April 15 (Tax Day in the U.S.) looming, I consider myself to have three moral obligations:

  • Pay taxes that can provide funding for many vital programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, public transportation, human services, education, environmental protections, and veterans’ benefits.
  • Protest tax policies that further entrench the rich and powerful while robbing the poor, depleting the middle class, and killing innocent people in the names of profit and national security.
  • Protest policies allowing huge corporations like General Electric to make billions of dollars in profits from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while paying NO federal taxes.

To find out where your tax payments go, check out the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL). According to their analysis, out of each dollar paid in federal income taxes in 2010, 39 cents went to fund current and past wars. This is probably an underestimate.

The federal budget deficit has been growing alarmingly since 2001, and it makes sense to look for ways to trim expenditures. But ask yourself, is it moral, is it just, and in the long run is it wise to cut the budgets for programs such as Social Security, job training, and Head Start, while keeping the Pentagon budget “off the table” and maintaining enormous tax breaks for the wealthy (e.g., through recent tax cuts on millionaires’ estates).

For a detailed breakdown of how social programs could be saved if some of the tax breaks for the rich were reduced, see the Center for American Progress.

In last year’s “weak economy,” hundreds of new billionaires emerged in this country while more and more people were losing their jobs and homes and falling below the poverty line. Is this what you want your taxes and current tax policies to support?

Finally, I have some suggestions:

To get some idea about what a cutback in military spending could accomplish, watch this video:

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology