Source: Other Words
Jesse Jackson ran a strong populist campaign for president in 1988, advocating bold new policies and programs to address inequality. This prompted establishment skeptics to scoff, “Where ‘ya gonna get the money?”
Jackson answered directly: We’ll “get it from where it went.”
He meant from corporations and the rich, which had long been rigging the economic system and government policies to shift income and wealth from the workaday majority to themselves.
Thirty years later, that shift has become an avalanche: Just three men — Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett — now own more of the nation’s wealth than the 165 million Americans who make up the bottom half of our population combined.
This extreme (and expanding) separation of the few from the many is why progressive policy makers today are calling — as Jackson had — for big, forward-thinking populist solutions. But again, the smug forces of the status quo scoff, “Where ‘ya gonna get the money?”
The answer is the same one Jackson offered decades ago, but this time two new factors are in play.
First, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have offered specific, easy-to-understand proposals to tax multimillionaires and billionaires to pay for the structural changes needed to open opportunities for the poor and middle class.
Second, the public now enthusiastically supports such a tax: A recent poll found two-thirds of Americans (including a majority of Republicans) favoring Senator Warren’s plan for a 2 percent tax on fortunes above $50 million.
Inequality will not fix itself. As the American majority has had to do periodically in our history, We The People must intervene to keep greed and wealth concentration from suffocating our society’s essential democratic values of fairness, justice, and opportunity for all.
A wealth tax is the place to start.
Jim Hightower has been described as that rarest of species: "A visionary with horse sense and a leader with a sense of humor." Today, Hightower is one of the most respected "outside Washington" leaders in the United States. Author, radio commentator and host, public speaker and political sparkplug, this Texan has spent more than two decades battling Washington and Wall Street on behalf of consumers, children, working families, environmentalists, small business and just-plain-folks. Right out of college, Hightower went to work as a legislative aide to Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough, a tireless liberal/populist stalwart in a cranky, often conservative state. In the early 1970s he headed up the Agribusiness Accountability Project, writing several books and testifying to Congress about the human costs of corporate profiteering and the value of sustainable, healthy, cooperative farming. From 1977 to 1979, he edited the Texas Observer, a thorn in the side of Texas Neanderthal politicians and a hotbed of first-rate journalism. In 1982, Hightower was elected Texas Agriculture Commissioner and then re-elected in 1986. The statewide post gave him a chance to fight for the kinds of policy and regulatory initiatives on behalf of family farmers and consumers he had long advocated. It also gave him visibility in national political circles, where Hightower became a prominent supporter of the Rainbow insurgencies within the Democratic Party in the 1984 and 1988 elections. In 1997 Hightower released a new book, There`s Nothing In The Middle Of The Road But Yellow Stripes And Dead Armadillos. Hightower continues to produce his highly popular radio commentaries and to speak to groups across the country. His newest venture is a monthly action-newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown, which will provide his unique populist insights into the shenanigans of Washington and Wall Street -- offering subscribers timely information, arguments and language to use in battling the forces of ignorance and arrogance. HIGHTOWER RADIO: Live from the Chat & Chew, a radio call-in show, debuted Labor Day, 1996, and continues to be a success with over 70 affiliates nationwide. This show includes a live audience, musicians, guests, and callers with a progressive populist perspective unheard anywhere else on the airwaves. Updates and more details about Hightower and his projects can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.jimhightower.com.
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