Creating a vision for a New America

The following was penned by Lewis Katz, the John C. Hutchins Professor Emeritus of Law at Case Western Reserve University

The 2020 election will not be America’s first chance to build an egalitarian society, but it may be its last. Three years of the Trump administration has resulted in a majority of Americans becoming more aware and sensitive to the inequality and racism eating away at our country. Throughout the last half of the 19th Century there were multiple movements at work in America, from the Grange to the women’s movements to the early labor movements, that sought to extend the American dream to common workers and farmers. Those movements failed miserably because they could not agree to include in the drive for a fairer society the newly freed slaves and their descendants.

The question facing the next administration is whether a President Biden and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate can avoid that pitfalls of our past and create a New America that ends the current sins of rampant racism and obscene income inequality. Those problems have been made worse by the Coronavirus and the Trump tax law that made the rich richer and have left most Americans hurting and worrying about the future. We need a government that acknowledges the health crisis and mobilizes us to do what is necessary to make it better, rather than one which denies it exists and pretends it will disappear.

America remains the richest country in the history of the world and has the wealth to ensure that no one lacks shelter, food and health care. We can achieve that by enacting a truly progressive tax code, by increasing the taxes of those who have too much. We can only achieve the New America by not allowing those who stand to benefit from dividing Americans and setting us at one another’s throats. Those who exploit contrived differences do so to keep us from uniting to create a better society and dismantle the superior status of the privileged few.

The end to extreme income disparity and racial injustice go hand-in-hand. Racial justice must be the first priority of the New America. After the Civil War the administration that followed the martyred

Lincoln thwarted Congress’ promise of 40 acres and a mule to the newly freed slaves. The failure to honor that promise eventually drove the southern black population back into a condition of near slavery, always the intention of the former slave owners. Later government efforts to create a new middle class in America, such as the GI Bill and government-subsidized mortgages for World War II veterans, ended up depriving African American veterans of these benefits by granting authority to the states to administer those policies. Many states, especially in the South, excluded black Americans from the benefits they had earned on the battlefield. Those failures by the federal government helped pave the way for the huge disparity in wealth between white and black families that we see today. What the government started, banks, private corporations, labor unions and real estate developers helped to make worse. So step one in making the New America must be to recognize the injustice of the past and to assure that every step in rebuilding our new society must include efforts to create racial equality, starting with reparations to finally level the playing field we hear so much about.

Economic justice for black people is a critical first step towards a day when we all say that black lives matter.

Correcting the injustices of the present by no means ends with black America but must extend to all Americans. Ensuring a decent life for every American must be the goal of the New America. To finance this new way of life, we need to go back to a tax system that was truly progressive, one that existed under Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Nixon. The notion that the richest few people in America are wealthier than ninety percent of the population is obscene. The overwhelming majority of Americans must stop electing officials who do not govern in their interests but, instead, sell themselves to the special interests. The tax system in America must become progressive again so that those making more than $500,000 pay more than 37% percent of their income, and those making millions and billions pay much, much more, enough to create a fairer America.

We have even been bamboozled into believing that the rich elite should pay lower taxes on investment income rather than the tax rate paid by workers and farmers on the wages they earn with their labor. We have been misled into believing that taxing the rich less ends up trickling down to benefit everyone. What is trickling down never helped and should be flushed away where it belongs. We also allow the wealthiest Americans to transfer their extreme wealth from generation to generation. Billions of dollars in campaign contributions and subsidized commentators persuaded the American people that money paid on inheritances is a “death” tax, rather than an inheritance tax. We have been misled into believing that an inheritance would destroy the family farm and endanger our food supply. The amount of money excluded from inheritance taxes has never been less than millions and millions of dollars which is more than enough to protect the family farmer and ensure that only very richest Americans pay any inheritance tax at all. In the New America the tax laws must be written by Senators and members of Congress answerable to the people, not politicians who are bought each election cycle to do the do the bidding of the wealthiest individuals, corporations, and hedge fund managers who pay little tax and seek to guarantee their favored status. The money available from an equitable progressive tax system can finance the New America and guarantee a better life for all Americans.

Along with a guaranteed living wage of no less than $15 dollars an hour, the avalanche of new tax dollars finally can be used to rebuild the infrastructure of America with well-paid jobs for everyone able to work. A guaranteed annual income is an essential element of the New America.

Universal health system has been talked about in this country since Theodore Roosevelt was president. The time has come for the New America to redesign a health system that provides equitable care for every man, woman and child in this country. Whether it is an enhanced system of Obamacare, or Medicare for all, or another alternative, there can be no excuse for not getting the job done, and providing equal medical care for all while reducing the dollars flowing to insurance companies and pharmaceutical giants. The next administration must also prepare to provide all Americans, at no cost, a coronavirus vaccine once one is available. That vaccine will be expensive, but why have government if it is not ready to protect the American people in the time of a deadly plague.

Finally, in the New America there is room for every law abiding man, woman and child currently residing in America, and those people must be granted legal status and a path to citizenship. Instead of demonizing undocumented aliens, we must recognize that we need these people and even more immigrants to start businesses, to take the place of our declining population, and to do the jobs Americans are unwilling to do. Legalizing the status of migrants who are here and welcoming new immigrants will end the invisible economy and will help underwrite Social Security and guarantee it for the next generation. Let’s stop making immigrants the bad guys. Notwithstanding the demagoguery, immigrants tend to have a lower crime rate than native Americans and are just looking for the better lives for their families that our ancestors, except those brought here in chains, sought when they took the often perilous journey to come here.

This brief outline of the New America just touches the surface of the better America we can build for all. There is real need in all regions of this country, and we have overlooked it too long. We need to stop fighting with each other and join together to elect to office those candidates who will represent We the People and commit to building the New America. This start will be labelled socialism, but it is not, but it will finally end socialism for the rich which we all underwrite. It is government for all the people, not just for the few. Let’s elect politicians this year who will make the New America our America.