Glenn Melancon/ Contributing writer
You don’t have to listen long to hear what workers are saying about their lives. Their hours are long. Their pay is stagnant. They want more time with their children. They live one healthcare emergency away from bankruptcy.
Millionaires and billionaires, however, have never had it better. They have the lowest tax rate since the 1930s. They have fortunes so big that they created a market for joy rides in space. Tickets range from at least $100,000 to $450,000.
How long do these experiences last? The Virgin Galactic flight lasts from 2 to 3 hours. The Blue Origin flight lasts about 11 minutes.
American workers are creating an incredible amount of wealth. American millionaires and billionaires are collecting an incredible amount of wealth. The first struggles to survive. The latter literally lights money on fire to float in space.
It doesn’t have to be this way. In the 1950s and 60s we had a tax and labor structure that encouraged paying workers a decent wage, then came the 1980s.
Ronald Reagan started a trend across the country. He convinced voters that investors, not workers, needed a break. Reagan started cutting capital gains taxes at the top and raising payroll taxes on workers.
Reagan also launched an attack on Unions. Unions allowed workers to defend themselves against large corporations. Unions set the wage and benefit standards in the rest of the economy. Without strong Unions, wages and benefits have been slowly declining for everyone.
Joe Biden and the Democratic Congress want to restore some balance to the work place. They want to increase health insurance subsidies, empowering workers to buy better coverage. They want to expand Medicaid to fund more Long Term Care.
Working families also need help. The Build Back Better plan would fund child care and pre-K education. This would create and improve thousands of jobs. It would relieve the anxiety of young families.
Paying for these programs requires raising taxes on individuals earning more than $400,000 per year. Individuals earning less will not pay a dime more. Franklin Roosevelt used this strategy during the New Deal and built the American Middle Class.
Reagan wanted to reverse the New Deal. In many ways he did. He created a trickle up economy. The wealth created by workers flows up into space.
Now, it’s time to build America from the ground up. We need to make life better for those that work and walk on this earth. We need an earth race, not a billionaire space race.
Glenn Melancon is a professor of history at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. He can be reached at glenn@glennmelancon.com. His opinions are his own and do not reflect those of the Jefferson Jimplecute.