Above Photo: Greenpeace Japan activists wearing nuclear scream masks and holding a banner reading “ They profit, you pay” next to the logos of nuclear companies Hitachi, GE and Toshiba, demonstrate in front of the Japanese parliament in the lead up to the second anniversary of the Fukushima meltdowns. The three companies have paid nothing for the nuclear disaster despite designing, building and maintaining the known-dangerous Fukushima Daiichi plant, while Japanese taxpayers are being forced to shoulder the vast majority of the disaster costs. Greenpeace is calling for laws to be changed to ensure all companies involved to be accountable for nuclear disasters.
…& Wall Street
Note: Senator Sanders is right. People who are parking their wealth offshore should not be rewarded with a tax holiday to bring the money back to the United States. Shouldn’t they be punished for avoiding US taxes? Secretary Clinton was likely to pursue the same plan of a tax holiday for offshore dollars in order to pay for much needed infrastructure.
The reality is the funds for infrastructure and many other urgent necessities exists in the United States and we could tax offshore dollars with a global tax. Rather than reducing the number of tax brackets the US needs to new brackets at the top. The top tax bracket should not be $500,000. There should be brackets to tax those making $1 million, $10 million, $50 million, $100 million at increasingly higher rates. In addition, wealth-based income should be taxed the same as work-based income; and there should be a financial transactions tax. This type of a progressive tax system would provide the resources needed to remake US infrastructure, uplift cities and poor communities and fund other necessities. By emphasizing the infrastructure spending Trump, like Clinton, would be selling the people of the United States on a massive tax break for the wealth — who have received massive tax breaks from both of the last two presidents.
Finally, the United States needs to examine how money is created. Under the US Constitution the government has the power to create money. This power was given to the Federal Reserve and banking system. Why should the US be borrowing money when it has the power to create money without any debt. This is a fundamental question that needs to be put on the political agenda. By giving the power to create money to banks, the US has made banks too powerful and limited the options of the federal government to fund urgently needed projects. KZ
Our infrastructure is collapsing, and the American people know it. Every day, they drive on roads with unforgiving potholes and over bridges that are in disrepair. They wait in traffic jams and ride in overcrowded subways. They see airports bursting at the seams. They see the need for a modern rail system. They worry that a local levee or dam could fail in a storm.
During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump correctly talked about rebuilding our country’s infrastructure. But the plan he offered is a scam that gives massive tax breaks to large companies and billionaires on Wall Street who are already doing phenomenally well. Trump would allow corporations that have stashed their profits overseas to pay just a fraction of what the companies owe in federal taxes. And then he would allow the companies to “invest” in infrastructure projects in exchange for even more tax breaks. Trump’s plan is corporate welfare coming and going.
In 2015, I introduced the Rebuild America Act to invest $1 trillion over five years to modernize the physical infrastructure that our economy depends on. In January, I will reintroduce that legislation to directly invest in our roads, bridges, water systems, rail, airports, levees and dams. Importantly, at a time when we need to reverse the 40-year decline of the American middle class, this legislation would create and maintain at least 13 million good-paying jobs, while making our country more productive, efficient and safe.
Unlike Trump’s plan, which creates new tax loopholes and is a corporate giveaway, my Rebuild America Act would be paid for by eliminating tax loopholes that allow hugely profitable multinational corporations to stash their profits in offshore tax havens around the world.