You Just Don’t Get It – Ultra-Rich Taxpayers Will Never Pay Their Fair Share!

You Just Don’t Get It – Ultra-Rich Taxpayers Will Never Pay Their Fair Share!

Yet Heavily Male Rank and File Unions Still Won’t Endorse Harris

While union leadership knows what’s best for labor, in male-heavy unions, sometimes the best that the Dems can get is no endorsement. The Teamsters, International Association of Firefighters, International Longshoremen’s Association, etc. are either holding back endorsing a candidate or officially not endorsing at all. Is it because these workers in heavily physical industries identify with an “anti-woke,” macho values embodied in the new MAGA-driven Trump GOP. Trump’s track record, discussed below, has been anti-union, anti-labor for most of his life. He has stated that “I hate to pay overtime,” suggesting that he typically finds a way to get some else to pay OT. In his several bankruptcies, he’s left small vendors and wage-earning employees in the lurch. While Trump tosses pet treats out during his rallies – we won’t tax tips or overtime – I suspect his MAGA House won’t be too happy to propose that.

CNN tells us that some 56% of Americans say the amount they pay in taxes is “more than their fair share,” up from 51% who thought so in 2019. Unsurprisingly, nearly two out of every three Americans feel the wealthy don’t pay their fair share of taxes, and 61% said they would support raising taxes on households earning over $400,000. Fair share: in terms of earnings, the top 1% pays proportionately more. But the analysis cannot simply be based on who earns the most; if you factor in the cost of living and the resulting percentage of truly discretionary spending, the mega-rich are living it up… while most of the rest of us struggle.

We live in an era where an individual American can aspire to and achieve trillionaire status! In the end, the mere fact that so many individuals can become multi-billionaires when we have rampant homelessness, deteriorating schools, accelerating climate change and even recent bills increasing infrastructure repair are at best, a band aid and a momentary respite from what’s really needed, is a testament to the supremacy of greed over need. With the exception of real property tax, we do not tax the accumulation of massive wealth until it is sold or transferred. Rich folks can borrow against that wealth, but while the loan proceeds are not taxable, the interest paid is deductible.

How’s that again? "[W]hile most of us live off our salaries, tycoons like Jeff Bezos live off their wealth," French economist Zucman wrote in the NY Times. "In 2019, when Mr. Bezos was still Amazon’s chief executive, he took home an annual salary of just $81,840. But he owns roughly 10 percent of the company, which made a profit of $30 billion in 2023." Elected MAGA members of Congress continue to cling to that “axiom” that has never, never been true, that if you reduce taxes to the rich, they create lots of “trickle down” good jobs.

It's bad enough that Trump history is to ladle costs on workers, reject labor collective bargaining rights, but loves to bring all kinds of special benefits to the rich, from capital gains and accelerated depreciation deductions for cherished industries (like oil and gas or farming) to treating fund managers as if they had invested money in a deal, even when they did not, under the “carried interest rule.” The Biden Harris administration has been pro-labor in every way, with Biden even being the first president to join a picket line.

On the other hand, companies found a very sympathetic National Labor Relations Board during the Trump years. Employers were forcing workers into anti-union presentations. Nick Romeo, writing for the September 27, 2024, Capital & Main (reprinted in the October 10th FastCompany.com) examined Trump’s actions against wage-earning labor during his term in office: “Perhaps the strongest indication of how workers seeking to organize would fare under a second Trump administration is the former chief executive’s record during his first administration. During Trump’s term, the NLRB — a quasi-judicial body with up to five members appointed by the president — acted on all 10 items in a 2017 corporate wishlist from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit nonpartisan think tank. The decisions made it easier for employers to fire or discipline employees, weakened rules to streamline union elections and restricted where and how workers can discuss workplace issues.

“The Trump board also proposed a rule that would have excluded graduate students from the category of employees. Under current board Chair Lauren McFerran, a Biden appointee, the proposed rule was withdrawn, protecting the right of student workers to organize. Since 2022, more than 44,000 student workers across the country have formed unions. ‘It’s certainly possible that they would resurrect that effort and try to take collective bargaining rights away from graduate students,’ said Sharon Block, professor of practice and executive director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School and an NLRB member under President Barack Obama… Seth Goldstein, an attorney at Julien, Mirer, Singla & Goldstein, which represents the Trader Joe’s United union, was more pessimistic. ‘I think student organizing would be dead,’ he said.

“Another important action by the Biden-era NLRB reversed the Trump board’s decision on the issue of ‘joint-employer’ status. Some companies shield themselves from liability for labor law violations and the requirement to negotiate with unions by claiming that a subcontractor is the legal employer of workers, even if both companies in fact determine wages and working conditions. Trump’s NLRB made it harder for firms to be considered joint employers, but Biden’s board has taken the opposite approach. Just this month [September], NLRB Region 31 in Los Angeles ruled that Amazon is a joint employer with its delivery service providers, which could enable the Teamsters to bring the corporate giant to the bargaining table.” Seriously. Do these workers really believe Trump will stand and deliver for them? Stand back and stand by!

I’m Peter Dekom, and sometimes that which is obvious to many finds strange bodies of voters for whom the obvious isn’t.