Today, I listened to a presentation at the Center for American Progress by Dr. Alan Krueger, Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors. As he spoke about the rise and consequences of inequality, I again recognized the timeliness of NETWORK’s campaign on the wealth gap (Mind the Gap!) – and the critical importance today of our work for economic justice.

Alan Krueger’s talk focused on how rising inequality and the diminishment of the middle class are very much at the heart of our nation’s economic woes. Overall trends in recent decades have been headed in the wrong direction. The percentage of middle class people has shrunk from a little over 50% in 1970 to 44% in 2000, to just 42% in 2010. We also now have more people at the lowest and highest extremes.

Growing inequality has come at a time when economic mobility has decreased. More and more, we find in our country that parents’ incomes are excellent predictors of their children’s future incomes – i.e., poor children are highly likely to become poor adults. This “land of opportunity” is providing less opportunity than we like to imagine.

Much of today’s rising income inequality can be traced to the dispersion in hourly wages. Dr. Krueger mentioned several causes – starting with technological changes that require more educated workers, the proliferation of very high salaries in the finance/real estate sector, less skilled U.S. workers competing with workers around the world, declining union membership, and tax policies that favor the rich.

Consequences of inequality include lower morale and productivity among those who feel they are underpaid. As their productivity decreases, economic problems grow.

NETWORK focuses on public policy, and Dr. Krueger mentioned several policy areas that could directly impact rising inequality. They include:

• Support of the Affordable Care Act (2010 healthcare reform legislation, which NETWORK helped pass). It is already helping many middle class families, including young people not able to go to college but who are now able to remain on their parents’ health insurance.
• Help for the middle class through a longer extension of unemployment benefits and the payroll tax holiday, two major focus areas for NETWORK in the coming weeks. These are helpful tools that support economic recovery.
• Better regulation to prevent excessive risk-taking and corruption in financial markets.
• Fair tax policies, another NETWORK priority, including more progressive taxes and a return of the estate tax to 2009 levels.
• Just access for all children to quality education, good nutrition, healthcare, etc. (i.e., safety net issues that have served as NETWORK priorities for decades).

I came away from Dr. Krueger’s talk with a renewed sense of purpose, along with a deeper appreciation for the thousands of NETWORK justice-seekers committed to strengthening our nation through fair government policies that foster equality and economic justice. Our work has never been more needed!

The unfounded attacks on the EPA ignore the lives saved and productivity created by the agency.

Tax rates are now at the lowest levels since the 1950’s. Yet the rich have not created jobs with their massive tax breaks. Millions are still unemployed. Millions more struggle to make ends meet in the face of higher health care costs, rising mortagae payments, growing food prices, and increased energy fees. We now see the theory of the “trickle-down” economy has fundamentally failed the American people.

Now that tax rates cannot be blamed, where will opponents target their anti-government rhetoric?

The Environmental Protection Agency has now become that scapegoat. It is being labeled as a job-killing machine by the politicians, ruthlessly going out of its way to impose regulations that have destoryed the American economy. Or so, that’s what we have been made to believe. In the 2011 budget, the House was able to reduce the EPA by 16% from 2010 spending, bringing it to $8.7 billion.

On Sept. 23, the Transparency in Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation (TRAIN) Act of 2011 passed the House. This act would repeal or block new and pending clean air protections, from standards that would curb mercury emissions from power plants to limits on pollution that travels across state lines, and remove proposed ozone and greenhouse gas standards. This is a direct attack on the productivity and lives on the American people.

They have ignored the fact that by 2020, the Clean Air Act would prevent:

• 230,000 premature deaths
• 2.4 million asthma attacks
• 200,000 heart attacks
• 5.4 million lost school days.

The Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst concluded that “new air pollution rules proposed for the electric power sector by the Environmental Protection Agency will provide long-term economic benefits across much of the United States in the form of highly skilled, well paying jobs through infrastructure investment.”

According to the nonpartisan Office of Management and Budget, investments could create an estimated $4 to $8 in economic benefits for every $1 spent on compliance with the Clean Air Act since 1970. New enforcements would create 1.46 million jobs between 2010 and 2015 due to installing new pollution controls with skilled, high-paying workers.

These irrational attacks are senseless. The air we breathe is being sacrificed in the name of big business with little proof that deregulation, like taxes, actually brings job creation.

Yesterday afternoon, I attended a lunch meeting in the Russell Senate Office Building entitled “Are Investment Incentives Necessary in Corporate Tax Reform?” with Donald Marron, the director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, Rob Atkinson, from the Technology and Innovation Foundation, and Michelle Hanlon, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Each of the members on the panel spoke on the topic of tax incentives, or temporary tax breaks for businesses if they make efforts in innovation or if they participate in a specified activity such as investment in a certain capital good.

Having studied history in college, and not economics, the speeches were a little over my head. No wonder the average American citizen is confused and often frustrated with the federal tax system! There is so much jargon. I suspect, and maybe it is just the young cynic in me, that the tax system is meant to be confusing and that the baffling mess and that the endless stacks of system manuals are a perfect way for ultra-wealthy corporations to slip in complicated income tax loopholes. Corporations could claim that the American tax rate is the second highest in the world. What is important to know about here is the “effective tax rate.” The effective tax rate is what corporations are actually paying in taxes after various loopholes and tax avoidance schemes. The effective American tax rate is not the second highest in the world, and is actually ranked near the middle of other countries’ effective tax rates. Is it not about time that the wealthiest pay their fair share?

“But don’t tax hikes on the wealthy prevent business leaders from having the ability to create jobs?” This is a question that often comes up when taxes are addressed in a critical light. The majority of the panel claimed that tax breaks ultimately harm the common worker for a company or organization. In reality, tax breaks do not create more jobs.

According to a May 2010 Forbes.com article, huge corporations like General Electric do not use the saved money to increase the number of jobs, but instead to create incredibly low-wage jobs in different countries. Why are American corporations allowed to make more and more money while refusing to create more jobs on our own soil? It is time for this unfair system to be shaken up and flipped upside down. If this article interests you, I highly recommend the Facebook website for the organization Citizens for Tax Justice. It has the great, but challenging mission of creating a just tax system in our country.

As pointed out by today’s  (Sept. 12) front page article, “For the very richest Americans, low tax rates on capital gains are better than any Christmas gift.” Our nation cannot afford daily Christmas gifts for the super-wealthy!

Here is the article, which should spur us all to demand change.

Yesterday I wrote a letter to members of the House and members of the Senate expressing concern about the tremendous perils facing our nation as administration and congressional leaders continue to struggle (or play political games) with the full faith and trust in our nation. Moments later, I was appalled to read Senator McConnell’s statement, “…I have little question that as long as this President is in the Oval Office a real solution is probably unattainable,” (Congressional Record, July 12, 2012, p. 4495) as he laid out his plan for a three-tier rise in the debt limit.

This plan would be difficult, as votes would be required at each stage. It would be no more moral than the current Republican stance (taxes are not to be a part of the solution) as this is a contingency in the three-tier plan also. They continue to hold that the only solution to the deficit problem – which holds hostage the nation’s ability to avoid default on any of our debts – is cuts to programs which predominantly assist those living in poverty to live with some measure of dignity.

Senator McConnell’s statement yesterday about the President harkens back to his oft repeated statements earlier this year that his main goal in the next two years is to ensure that this is a one-term President.

Holding firm on “no taxes” is a political move, directed toward gaining votes from those who mistakenly believe that the President’s goal is to significantly increase their taxes—now while we are perhaps edging toward recovery from the second deepest recession in recent history. It is a stance he hopes will ensure that President Obama is not reelected in 2012. Whether the President is reelected or not should be based on reality, not on seductive, easy-to-remember falsehoods.

It becomes more and more difficult for me to respect some of those in leadership.