Forget President Obama: Why Isn't Robert Reich President?

I know it's not a popular view on Wall Street, but what if Robert Reich is right and the wealthy are severely under-taxed, to the detriment of the entire society. In a video on youtube, the former Labor Secretary lays out a brief case for what has caused the decline of the middle class, and with it, the decline of the American economy. It is the middle class, after all, that drives the national economy; if it suffers, the entire nation declines. Reich notes a simple, sad truth about the American economy since Reagan. Since 1980, the American economy has doubled in size. Yet wages have remained flat. Where did all that generated wealth go? To the top, of course, where it didn't exactly trickle down to anyone else. “The top one percent used to take home ten percent of total income. Now it takes home more than twenty percent,” Reich said. “The super rich have 40 percent of the nation's wealth,” he added. What has been the effect of all this extra money flowing upward in the economy? Increased political power for the wealthy, for one, which explains why they've been able to chop their top tax rates more than in half, from over 70% in 1980 down to 35% today. The capital gains rate, which taxes the majority of the income the super wealthy earn, is 15%. You pay more than that on your Visa V card. The result of these tax decreases? Tax receipts are at the lowest percentage of the economy in sixty years, a mere 15% of the total economy. At the very time when the government needs to step in and smooth over the rough economy, it lacks the financial means to do so. Having undercharged the wealthy for a generation, governments at all levels are cutting education, police, fire, health care, and environmental programs, while tax cuts for the wealthy mysteriously remain untouchable. As Reich points out in his video, the decline in the American middle class has led to a strange phenomenon, whereby the victims of the policy identify politically with the folks who caused the problem. Rather than band together to force higher taxes on the extremely wealthy (and save public programs like Medicare and Social Security, as well as schools, roads, and other necessary government expenditures), the middle class is divided and politically weak. The Democratic party used to fight for the middle class, including quality of life issues such as health care, the environment, fair wages, and education in their platform. Now, at a time when Democrats most need to support the middle class, they've abandoned the platform to support extending tax cuts for the wealthy and other terrible ideas that put us into this fiscal mess. Reich's plan, as laid out on his website, would increase the tax rate on incomes over $15 million to 70%. He would also boost the tax rate to 60% on incomes between $5 and $15 million, and 50% between $500,000 and $5 million. He would also significantly cut taxes for incomes under $100,000. This relates to the relationship between higher taxes on the wealthy and economic growth. “Rather than depress economic growth, higher taxes on the rich correlate with higher growth. During almost three decades spanning 1951 to 1980, when the top rate was between 70 percent and 91 percent, average annual growth in the American economy was 3.7 percent. Between 1983 and the start of the Great Recession, when the top rate dropped to between 35 percent and 39 percent, average growth was 3 percent,” Reich said. Maybe it's time for Barack Obama, who is a lot closer politically to a 1950's Eisenhower Republican than he is to a Socialist, to announce he's stepping down to allow an actual Democrat (like Reich) to run. The middle class deserves a voice in this election, and as Reich shows, they are not going to receive one from either major political party this year.