A little more than one hundred years ago, President William Howard Taft spoke about the wrongs of economic royalty, the concentration of unlimited economic power in the hands of an American elite. Last night our current President spoke about the same tragic phenomenon. Two Presidents, one Republican and one Democratic, separated in time by one hundred years, addressed the same dismal circumstance of our national existence. Both Presidents were right to do so.
There was a decade, roughly halfway between their Presidencies, when economic oligarchy was not the be all and end all of the American experience. There was a time when the creation of a strong, prosperous and productive middle class was the goal we believed in as a nation. It is time we went back to that powerful belief. President Obama has made it clear that he’s going to steer in that direction. Congress should join him.
Find out what's happening in Concordfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
It should begin, as the President said, by scrapping the amazing tax preferences and economic candy bars handed out to people and industries that neither need them nor deserve them. It’s time that we eliminated the goodies in the social security system the one’s that cap taxation so the highly paid pay taxes at rates that get lower and lower the more they get paid. It’s time the Republicans in Congress began to care about the country again, not just the masters of wealth and privilege whose interests they promote.
