Louis can speak for himself, of course, but it's hard for me to read that
post as an attack on the slogan of "taxing the rich." It seems to me quite
the opposite. Perhaps that is not the post you meant to reference.

There is one concern hinted at in the critique that I agree with, however;
the tendency in the US for liberals to complain (correctly) about the
unfair distribution of the income tax burden, without paying much mind to
what the money is spent on. More than 50% of the federal income tax
currently goes to the Pentagon and its contractors, which is obviously an
artifact of the same balance of forces that the produces the current
distribution of the tax burden. Why complain about the one but not the
other? How much should we cheer increasing taxation on the rich, if the
majority of the money will be captured by the Pentagon contractors for
military junk that we don't need, like three different ways of blowing up
the world, or the F-35 boondoggle, which the incoming Canadian government
has rightly pledged to cancel purchases of?

This is something that many of us wish Sanders would talk more about...he
is far from the worst on this front, but he has plenty of room for
improvement. Barney Frank - no socialist - talked about cutting the
Pentagon budget by 25%...Sanders, unfortunately, has largely so far hewed
to the Democratic line of "no increases for the Pentagon without
corresponding increases in domestic spending."









Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
[email protected]
(202) 448-2898 x1

On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 9:53 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:

>  "Gar Lipow" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> My vision is not what it used to be so could not find Louis P's  post on
> the Tobin tax.
>
> See:
> http://louisproyect.org/2011/11/22/does-the-slogan-tax-the-rich-serve-the-ruling-class/
>
> --
>      Ron
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> pen-l mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
>
>
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l

Reply via email to