No Citizen Left Untaxed
NEA boss has it backwards when he claims that America cannot have a middle class without unions.
Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, America’s largest union, claims, “In actions more fitting for comic book arch-villains, a new crop of state leaders have launched blistering attacks on working families disguised as budget and education reforms, and many have sought to strip workers’ rights to have a voice through their union.”
If he is correct and the middle class is being threatened, it is the public employee unions (PEUs) that are doing the threatening. Fewer than one in eight Americans are in unions but more than 50% of them are in PEUs. It’s hardly a secret that PEU pensions are in the process of sending various states and cities around the country into insolvency.
Where are the states supposed to get this money to pay for the budget busting pensions? The PEUs want to raise taxes. But on whom?
The corporations? Perhaps not. At 39%, we already have the highest corporate tax rate in the world.
“The rich?” Well, maybe not. It seems that the rich, defined as the top 1% of taxpayers, earn approximately 21% of the nation’s income, yet already pay almost 40% of all federal income taxes. What about the top 25% of taxpayers? They earn almost 68% of the nation’s income, but pay 86% of all federal income taxes. How much more can we realistically expect to tax “the rich?”
Who’s left? The middle class. To state the obvious, increasing the taxes on middle income earners is hardly the way to increase membership in the middle class.
So the real point is not that America can’t have a middle class without unions. It’s that America can’t afford PEUs, which very often put the very politicians in office with whom they then negotiate. Ultimately, the taxpayer, middle class or otherwise, is disenfranchised. This is just the problem that “the new crop of governors” like Chris Christie, Scott Walker, Mitch Daniels and John Kasich are dealing with by trying to limit the vast power of the greedy PEUs.
About the author: Larry Sand is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan,non-political group dedicated to providing teachers with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.