Dr. Irving Fradkin (“America can be great again,” August 12) is without doubt a beloved booster of communitarian values and I have enjoyed reading his pieces over the years. However, from time to time I have found his conventional wisdom to be less than wise.
This is one such case.
In his most recent letter Dr. Fradkin portrays the problems of our democracy as a lack of bipartisanship and suggests that tweaks to campaign finance rules can make government more democratic.
What we REALLY need is an end to corporate bribery through lobbying, PACs, and classifying corporations as humans.
Dr. Fradkin wants more people to establish scholarships for students.
What we REALLY need is free university education – such as Germany and other nations offer their citizens – if we don’t want the next several generations to be drowned in debt. Of course this requires that the states and federal government not be totally broke. Raising revenues is essential, and spending on more than the military is a choice we’ll have to make.
Dr. Fradkin wants to create jobs by reducing taxes.
Reducing taxes does not magically create jobs that can easily be outsourced to Bangladesh, Mumbai, or Taiwan. And in Bangladesh where major clothing companies sew your jeans and shirts – or in the FoxConn compounds where Apple products are made – wages are criminally low and companies need not worry much about worker safety. Places like the Marshall Islands are technically in the U.S. but workers there are not protected by the same labor laws as Americans. Are virtually slave-labor jobs in places like this going to magically migrate back to us when outsourcing is so profitable?
Even when American jobs ARE created, we are now seeing a trend toward McJobs and the Uber economy – where everyone cobbles together an existence from multiple part-time, low-paying jobs where benefits are a thing of the past. This is the Third World model, Dr. Fradkin.
And what is to ensure that the Walton (Walmart) family and the fast food purveyors – even when granted cushy tax deals – will provide a working wage for their employees? Absolutely nothing. In fact, Walmart employees have to supplement their paychecks with food stamps and Medicare – which WE, and not the Waltons, pay for. What’s good for the billionaires is not necessarily good for the average guy – and to believe that charity will be given generously and spontaneously by billionaires (trickle down economics) is more than wishful thinking. It’s delusional.
Next Dr. Fradkin suggests we go begging from billionaire philanthropists like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet for matching grants to communities. In fact, Dr. Fradkin devotes a lot of time to successful begging strategies, mentioning our local success story, Dr. Irwin Jacobs, as well.
There is nothing wrong with giving back voluntarily to a community that has given you so much – don’t get me wrong. But what we REALLY need is for corporations and wealthy citizens to pay their fair share of taxes, not simply drop a few bucks in our coffee cups as they pass us begging on the street.
When the working and middle classes are not living hand to mouth – that’s when America will be great again.
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