A Greed Tax
Bridget Kelly for State Senate
District 35, MD
November 2014
In 2014, I ran for state senate in Maryland. I didn't make it but i enjoyed the ride. Here is a message from my website:IS It Time to Impose a Greed Tax
There have been numerous news stories about CEOs of large, billion dollar companies in our country. It has been reported that many of them makes an obscene amount of money every year, millions and millions of dollars every year. They live in multi-million dollar mansions and have all sorts of toys associated with having lots of money. They make handsome returns on their large volume of investments. Because they fall within the 1% category they pay a smaller percentage of taxes as compared to the average wage earner in America. I do not begrudge them this success. But I do worry about some of their employees.
They have lots of employees, thousands of them. Some of them are paid a decent salary. However, there are a few companies that do not pay their employees well. There are some companies where the overwhelming majority of the employees are earning salaries at the minimum wage. A recent study reports that 80% of these employees need some sort of public assistance to survive. They work full time, with minimal or no health benefits and they are living in poverty. Their income is supplemented by food stamps, or housing options or other forms of welfare aid.
The employer lives in splendor and the employees live in poverty. And the rest of us work to supplement the employees’ meager salaries.
DO WE NEED A GREED TAX?????????????
Is it the responsibility of the general public to supplement this meager salary so that the employer can live a life of luxury? Or should the employers pay their people enough so that the employees can survive without a supplement from the government. Does someone who works 40 hours a week need to be beholden to the government and the tax payers?
How can we protect ourselves from the so few who have so much money (and power). How can we assure that we do not create a society of indentured servants who have no possibility of earning a reasonable salary? When so few hold all of the money and now hold all of the voice in legislation, we must protect ourselves.
Our government is not killing us with guns and weapons. Our government is killing us by making us voiceless by pandering to the need and greed of super mega corporations. I propose a greed tax as one avenue to address this disparity. A greed tax can be imposed on any company that has X amount of its employees who work full time but still live in poverty. This tax could be used to provide free career training to those employees who want to learn a skill to advance their careers in areas that are better paying jobs.
We are being buried and choked by the few who have all the power. We must not let the greed of so few dictate the quality of life for the rest of us. If people cannot get out of poverty after working an honest week of work, there is nothing left in our society. Life is drudgery. People are left without dreams. Poverty is like a cancer, it can grow and grow and eek its way into our middle class and destroy the life of this country.
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