by New-Constitution | May 21, 2020 | 1 comment
The freedom of our citizenry depends not only on safeguards that protect our rights from over-reach by government. Massively unequal accumulation of wealth in individuals and in corporations concentrate power in our society in ways that reduces both the freedoms and equality of opportunity for everyone else. The concentration of wealth must be restricted by government for the society to remain truly free and democratic. In Article IX, this new Constitution stipulates that the federal government has both the right and the obligation to redress the concentration of power in individuals, demographic groups, and large corporations.
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This is an attempt to address a serious injustice, one that threatens democracy itself. Indeed, it’s a recurring problem in US and world history; the accumulation of wealth so great that even governments cannot compete with it.
The obvious route to limit extreme wealth is through taxation. Perhaps Article IX should simply enshrine a progressive income tax on individuals and corporations. The greater the income, the higher the tax rate. It used to be done this way in America during the New Deal era, and the result was broad prosperity for the middle class.
I am not sure that privileged demographic groups should be taxed to redistribute wealth to the disadvantaged. A better approach might be to provide more opportunities for the poor to move up the ladder, using only tax revenues from the obscenely rich to pay for such programs.
We need to be careful though, that the government itself doesn’t accumulate so much wealth that it acquires tyrannical power over society. It’s a difficult balancing act. Perhaps a clause requiring budget surpluses to be rebated to the taxpayers would keep the economy functioning fairly.