MarketWatch columnist David Weidner offered five possible demands for the Occupy movement today that merit some consideration. The website is hardly where one would expect to find constructive commentary since it is owned by News Corporation. Perhaps someone slipped at the Ministry of Truth. Weidner, for his part, says he supports the occupiers, although in the same breath he says they should focus on achievable demands or go home. In any event, here are his suggestions:
1. Raise the minimum wage for companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenues. OWS actually calls this “restoration of the living wage” and it comes from an early post on its web site, but it’s a reasonable goal that could happen if the movement pressures congress enough. My tweak would be making big business pay for its labor at a decent rate. This could be combined with a tax for companies that use foreign labor and materials to build their products.
2. One-year moratorium on foreclosures and credit card defaults. This would be less than the OWS demand that all consumer debt be forgiven. On the surface, this would be outrageous to the banks and the housing industry, and it may not even help the economy heal, but given that the banks were bailed out to the tune of $1.13 trillion in loans and guarantees for more than a year, it’s only fair.
3. Raise the capital gains tax rate to 25%. Individually, OWS members have talked about the inequity that gives certain Wall Street funds a two-thirds discount on their taxes. At 25%, the rate still wouldn’t be near the standard income tax rate for millionaires, but it would be closer.
4. Financial transactions tax to pay for all regulatory efforts. Think of it as a toll road for users of the financial system.
5. Bring back Glass-Steagall. The Depression-era law that divided casino-style investment banking with the retail system used by moms and pops worked for nearly seven decades. It wasn’t broke, and they fixed it and us.
This is my working list of a dozen reach-for-the-sky suggestions for restoring justice, sanity and humanity to the USofA. The above five and my list overlap on the Financial Transactions Tax and Glass-Steagall. The Occupiers aren’t ready to be roped into a specific set of demands but we can propose on BMG!
1. Close loopholes that allow U.S. corporations to incorporate in the Caribbean to avoid paying U.S. corporate income taxes.
2. Prosecute Wall Street bank and investment executives who committed criminal acts that led to the current economic collapse, recession and massive unemployment.
3. Break up the TBTF banks and corporations. If they are TBTF, they are too big to exist in the first place.
4. Re-institute the Glass-Steagall Act that separated investment banking from commercial banking.
5. Start a direct government jobs program like the WPA, training unemployed Americans with skills needed to redevelop our public infrastructure and develop 21st-century industries.
6. Pass Instant Runoff Voting to give our vote for third-party candidates a competitive chance when Democrats and Republicans offer us little choice.
7. Institute a Financial Transaction Tax immediately.
8. End the Bush tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires immediately.
9. Set up a Presidential Commission to make recommendations for ending the corrupting influence of money and lobbyists on our governmental process – which should include an amendment to overturn the reprehensible Citizens United decision.
10. Compel banks to buy back distressed mortgages at current market rates and allow homeowners to stay in their homes, making lower payments.
11. Add a Public Option to health care reform – it will inspire competition, just what the for-profit insurance companies fear.
12. Use the additional revenues raised by the above economic reforms to fund:
• Universal health coverage
• Excellent educational opportunities for all children in the U.S.
• Training and actual jobs for ex-offenders so that they have something productive to do, with income, when they re-enter society
• No One Left Out!
THIS needs to be national, non-partisan, grass roots, involve vast numbers of people, and is critical to saving government of, by and for the people. Such a drive to amend the 14th Amendment to clarify that “corporations” are not entitled to the same rights as the people in “government of, by and for the people” is not a “Democratic Party” issue or a “Republican Party issue” – it is truly non-partisan, good government, and needed to preserve democracy.
In our own state, how about legislation that mandates open votes whenever more than $50,000 in taxpayer money is involved, and places all of Beacon Hill and all “quasi public” agencies within the same Open Meeting and FOIA laws that apply to cities, towns, counties (and Christopher, how about YOU write the amendment to those laws, since you have expertise in the problems with them) as a goal for our instate occupies that is as necessary to cleaning up and protecting/reclaiming democracy in Massachusetts as the vote is to Occupy DC, or honest public transportation is to Occupy Detroit??
It may be possible – did you notice? BoA blinked and debit card fees have been stared down by Occupy (Did YOU expect a full retreat from the BOA constrictor): http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/business/bank-of-america-drops-plan-for-debit-card-fee.html?_r=1
1. I think this is easier said than done, unless you adopt strict rules about foreign investment in companies doing business in the country, which are not common in free and prosperous societies. It isn’t that the goal is wrong, but that the means of achieving it may prove counterproductive.
2. Hit this elsewhere. Criminal prosecutions without crimes or evidence are difficult.
3. Agreed.
4. Meh. Which would accomplish what, exactly?
5. Okay. But to make it effective, let’s waive environmental review of such projects, and exempt them from the various “prevailing wage” laws, so that it can get more bodies working, and actually improve infrastructure at reasonable cost.
6. Sure, I would love that. But, honestly, discussing different electoral systems zzzzzzzzzzz.
7. Would love to know what a Financial TRansaction Tax taxes, and how.
8. Okay. But how about for everyone else as well, since they got most of the dollars of the tax cut?
9. Sure. Maybe the commission could recommend that all elections must have a cost of zero. Would make TV during certain Octobers less of a toothache.
10. Little takings problem there, unless you want the government to simply assume all private debts.
11. OK, I guess OWS might make this slightly more viable than it has been for the last 50 years.
12. I missed the part where revenues were raised. I only saw the part where an awful lot was spent.
I know that these are supposed to be “moderate” but these things would require either a constitutional amendment, or causing the federal government to buy all of this debt with no discount.
In that sense, these proposals don’t seem to belong in the reality-based world.
about the 5 proposals in the post, or hubspoke’s 12-point plan? The 5 in the post, it seems to me, could be accomplished with straightforward legislation, with the possible exception of the foreclosure moratorium which might present some contract clause or takings issues.
I didn’t read your title. OK, so your comment is restricted to mandatory write-downs and the moratorium. On that, I agree – there are some sticky legal issues that would have to be dealt with. Best way might be to strongly encourage the banks to go along.
was strongly encouraged to swallow Countrywide, and then penalized for doing so.
I don’t see how this could even work: Here, take some voluntary massive losses, for the national good, and good luck with the shareholder lawsuits.
I don’t see how force can be involved without a takings problem, which would make such force beyond the financial reach of the government. In moments in which I am susceptible to conspiracy theory, I wonder if all of the yelping about corporate personhood is about removing constitutional protection of property interests.
All of these banks require FDIC and many other regulatory approvals in practice, although crucially not in theory. They are completely at the mercy of the government in practice. Which is why they have taken it upon themselves to control the government. In any event, although there might be a takings claim — lawyers can always dream up claims — I think it would be irrelevant.
So, someone has an article of private property that (i) cost $100, (ii) is worth less than $100, with no certainty of how much less than $100. Government forces me to sell it for $10. And the government proposes that it can do this, without compensating me for the appropriation of that property, because if I do not acquiesce, then I will be regulated to death?
And this is a a lawyer dreaming up claims?
And it is not a coincidence, since most of these assets are held through business entities, that another key demand of this movement is to revoke the constitutional rights of corporate entities?
It is beginning to seem to me that the key demands of OWS boil down to “we want free stuff.”
Sounds to me like OWS dreaming away the 5th Amendment.
1. As a lawyer, I strongly encourage a floating minimum wage based on revenue. This alone would solve unemployment among lawyers and accountants devising ways to isolate the entity with the employees.
2. I would love to see such prosecutions. I assume that career-minded US Attorneys would as well. I also assume that there may be some problem with figuring out what statutes were violated, by whom, and how to prove that beyond reasonable doubt.
3. I presume this is the evil hedge fund manager. Unfortunately, the rule setting this terrible “loophole” is designed to give “sweat equity” some balance with “financial equity” in partnerships, and removing it would tend to put financial interests at an advantage over intellectual or labor capital in business.
The only reason there is a capital gains tax that is different from the ordinary income tax is because, in theory, the gain was already taxed once as as corporate income. One could eliminate both the corporate income tax and the separate rate for capital gains and greatly simplify things. Who cares if the company has money, no one can do anything with it until it is distributed as income or as a gain, so just tax it then, once, and to your progressive heart’s content.
4. Insufficient detail to respond. What financial transactions? A tax when you make a mortgage payment?
5. I’m okay with Glass-Steagall, but also realize that it would not have prevented anything that now ails us. It is also somewhat useful to note that it was the investment banks WITHOUT commercial banking affiliates that were in rougher shape during this crisis, so it isnt really clear what the repeal of this is supposed to have done.
These are great and I hope we continue to kick them around. The Occupy movement has opened the door to just this kind of discussion, something no one else has been willing or able to do.
My quibble is only with the part about “possible demands for the occupy movement.” I do not know what will happen next–maybe the different General Assemblies will adopt a unified, cogent set of “demands,” or principles. If so, great.
But also maybe they never do that. Maybe that’s not their role in this. Maybe they “just” continue to articulate outrage in a way that cannot be ignored and that empowers the rest of us to act in our various modes and spheres.
That would be great too.
Have it at, say, X% of the CEO’s compensation, or a minimum of $Y per hour, whichever is higher. This recognizes that success is a team effort.
A few other things to add to the OP’s great suggestions:
– Tie corporate tax rate to jobs created or lost.
– Eliminate taxing “capital gains” at a rate that’s different than earned income. Give a middle-class person a raise, they buy appliances and cars, and that directly creates jobs. Rich people tend to speculate on stocks and other financial instruments that are only slightly correlated with creating jobs. Why give the wealthy a break, I don’t see how it helps anyone.
– End the punitive credit-card-written 2005 bankruptcy bill that. That was a total piece of crap.
– Greatly increase deductions for dependents, and make them larger for people with significant disabilities.
– Medicare for all.
Especially Medicare for all.
Instead of allowing any anonymous group of 41 Senators quietly and timidly say they don’t want to allow a vote, which then delays the opportunity to even call the question for another 3 days, go back to the days when someone who just had to filibuster would have to sit up in front of the chamber and read the newspaper and telephone book for 15 or 20 hours.
That would solve a lot of problems. Imagine how much more would have been done between 2008 and 2010 — or even today — if the filibuster was reformed?
This should have been done in 2008, when the GOP first started their obstructionist behavior. The Senate should do it NOW.
I assure you that if the GOP takes over the Senate, this change will be at the top of their list, to ensure that a Democratic minority will not be able to similarly derail a conservative GOP agenda.
On the other hand, when the Class enemy shows up on the doorstep offerin’ free lessons, maybe a little suspicion is not utterly out of place?
Happy days.
From “The Corporatocracy is the 1%” (www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/02) by Carl Gibson on commondreams.org:
…which would give Congress and the states the power to regulate the finances of their respective elections.