Make no mistake about it, the Republican tax bill is a blatant act of class war perpetrated by the rich on the underclasses. The monstrous bill, which all but one Republican Senator voted to pass (Bob Corker of Tennessee being the lone dissenter), is being cloaked by the GOP in the typical language of “growth” and “boosting the economy.” While some may fall for the scam being masked by such language, the numbers themselves don’t lie. The “growth” will be solely enjoyed by the wealthy and the only “boost” that will be measured will be in the financial portfolios of the rich.
Forbes, which can hardly be described as a bastion of Marxist thought, has described the GOP tax scam as a “ruse” to squeeze more taxes out of the lower and middle classes in order to compensate for massive tax breaks to the wealthy. And while the plan does see a net decrease of $1.5 trillion in taxes collected by the federal government over the next ten years, it does so by eliminating $6 trillion in taxes collected mostly from the wealthy and large businesses while raising $4.5 trillion in taxes mostly on the backs of the middle and lower classes.
What we are getting is possibly the single greatest transfer of wealth from the lower to the upper classes in the history of the world. According to a report in the New Yorker, which analyzed a congressional report on the GOP tax plan, families and earners making below $75,000 a year will see a gradual increase in taxes by 2027 while those earning more will see a continued decrease in their taxes, with those earning above the $1 million mark seeing the greatest decreases.
In the words of Jeffrey “the Dude” Lebowski, “this aggression will not stand, man.”
The “trickle down” ideology that the Republicans have long used to superficially justify the idea that the rich need a break that must come on the backs of the poor is so absurdly stupid that it doesn’t even need much refuting at this point. It’s basically an exercise of self-satire that the Republicans are putting forth measures to, among other injustices, raise taxes on graduate students and reduce health care funding so that they can give the wealthy breaks on private jet maintenance.
The rich do not have any interest in watching any “trickling down” of the wealth they hoard. They are constantly seeking ways to reduce the amount of money they must spend as owners of the means of production to increase profits and expand their capital. Via automation, owners of capital can increasingly meet demands for their products while decreasing the amount of money they need to share with the lowly serfs they begrudgingly employ (owning slaves would be preferable to them). The stock market affords the ultra-rich even greater opportunities to exponentially add to their stockpile of wealth with as little-as-possible of that wealth “trickling down” to the lower classes. The idea that making the rich even richer will somehow help everyone else is espoused only by the scammers who know they’re lying and the naive who are too dim to realize they’re being lied to. “Economic growth,” as is understood by economists, is a sham.
The GOP tax scam is just one of many instances of the political puppets in Washington working for the benefit of their wealthy overlords. We are way beyond the point where simply voting every few years will solve anything. People are beginning to seriously talk about staging things like general strikes and other forms of direct action as a step toward mobilization. The class war has already started. It started long ago. Perhaps it’s time to start fighting back.
[Featured Image by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]