When I was born in 1954, a Republican President was embarking on the most ambitious peacetime infrastructure in American history, the Interstate Highway System. The top marginal tax rate was 91%.
When I was 12 years old, Voting Rights Act finally ensured that African Americans enjoyed the franchise they’d been denied for hundreds of years. CEOs were paid 24 times what their workers were paid
By the time I graduated from grade school, Medicare guaranteed a minimum level of affordable health care for the elderly. Before my 12th birthday, Americans walked on the Moon.
When I graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Madison my tuition accounted for 20% of the cost of my education. Public funds made up most of the difference.
But then something happened. I tend to think of it as Reaganism, but it has since metastasized into something even more grotesque.
Since the 1980s
- The top marginal tax rate has declined to 35%
- Around the country, republican-held legislatures are passing laws restricting voter access, in the name of reducing fraud — which demonstrably doesn’t exist in any important way.
- Â In 2005, CEOs were paid 262 times the average worker’s pay
- Paul Ryan has proposed changes to Medicare that will mean seniors will pay $1,200 more for health insurance by 2030, and over $5,000 by 2050 — but only seniors younger than me!
- Public funding of the UW system has dwindled to 20% of the cost of education a student.
Baby-boomers have enjoyed better pay, more equal distribution of wealth, well-funded public education, ever-improving infrastructure, a more progressive tax system, and better health care than the generations before them.
Following generations are losing all these things, in large part because their elders are have been fighting for lower taxes.
Seems to me we’ve climbed a ladder to prosperity and are now pulling it up behind ourselves. Following generations be damned!
It’s shameful, really.