The elections of 2016 marked a season of discontent, a time which expressed a deep dissatisfaction with the direction in which the country is going, a time demanding that government redress grievances, that demands for the necessities of life be met.
The Tax Reform Bill and Jobs Act of 2017 is the ruling class’ answer. It projects a dark vision that gives shape to a future in which a corporate State moves to consolidate private property while containing by force a growing impoverished class whose means of livelihood are steadily being taken away.
Corporate tax rates are being slashed. 62 per cent of all of the benefits of the tax plan go to the corporations and the super-rich. For those earning $75,000 or less, taxes will increase. Public resources are being cut drastically. Education funding is to be reduced by what amounts to $300 per student nationwide. Millions will be dropped from healthcare insurance. Food stamps, nutrition programs, child health programs, programs for the disabled – all are being cut.
Next on the agenda are drastic cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. An already bloated military budget is being expanded, along with increases for border and immigration enforcement, homeland security and a growing militarized police.
This is what a fascist economy looks like. It is a corporate State operating the economy in the interest of private property, while putting in place its dark vision of untold wealth for the propertied class and increased deprivation for the propertyless.
The centerpiece of the ruling class propaganda, used to justify its tax cut plan by reducing taxes on the corporations, is that the corporations will invest in expanded production and create millions of new jobs. The reality is that in the next 12 years more than 800 million jobs will be eliminated globally by laborless, automated technology. In the U.S. it is 73 million jobs. The tax cut bill of 2017 cannot and will not lead to a new industrial revolution and create new jobs and prosperity for America’s “middle class.”
The new class being created by laborless technology is not buying the dark vision. Polls taken just as the tax cut bill was coming before the Congress showed that barely 30 per cent of the population supported it. The new class will not accept the dark future the ruling class has in store for them.
While until recently it could be said that all politics is local, now all politics is national. Confronting the new class is a national State that openly operates in the interests of a ruling class by expropriating public property, as it moves more forcefully to protect private property. It is time for a bright new vision, that reflects the interests of a new class and boldly fights for a program that abolishes private property – a vision and program that makes all property public property and distributes the vast abundance of society to all based on need. Armed with such a vision, the dark vision of the ruling class will evaporate like the morning fog on the dawning of a new day.
January/February 2018. Vol28.Ed1
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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