Blue rebuke

To the editor:

In a rebuke of Donald Trump’s policy failures, Democrats swept into office on Election Day.  Beyond the well-publicized races in NYC, New Jersey and Virginia, Democrats won seats in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Florida, the Carolinas and Mississippi for offices ranging from state Supreme Court justice, district attorney, sheriff, state legislator to public utility regulator. In New York, Democrats won control of the Onondaga County legislature for the first time in a half-century. Equally surprising, the margins of victory were consistently 10 or more points.  The Democrat message was simple — America has become unaffordable.

Perhaps some voters have begun to realize that GOP policies are killing the American Dream.  Wealth inequality, the main driver of the affordability crisis, has soared from a 100-year low in 1980 to its largest gap in U.S. history today. Republican presidential administrations from Reagan to Trump slashed taxes on top earners, investors, inheritances and corporations. In 1980, the estate tax exemption was $161,563 ($635,225 adjusted for inflation); this year it’s $13,990,000. Corporate taxes, once one-third of federal revenue, now account for less than one-tenth. 

Conversely, payroll taxes, the most regressive tax, went from 10 percent of federal revenue to 32 percent. Since 1978, CEO compensation has risen by 1,322 percent, while worker wages grew by 18 percent. A recent ProPublica exposé found that the richest 25 Americans paid 3.4 percent on the $401 Billion they earned and those making $70,000/year paid 14 percent.

Beyond taxes, GOP right-to-work laws, refusals to raise the minimum wage, anti-union policies, opposition to public healthcare and deregulation all served to privatize profits and socialize the cost of doing business in the U.S. Billionaires and corporations, along with their GOP accomplices, have priced ordinary Americans out of their homes, their health and just about everything else.

 Joseph Cannisi