{"id":191,"date":"2012-08-16T15:52:17","date_gmt":"2012-08-16T21:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/walz-chojnacki.us\/Pensees\/?p=191"},"modified":"2012-08-16T15:52:17","modified_gmt":"2012-08-16T21:52:17","slug":"pulling-up-the-ladder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.walz-chojnacki.us\/Pensees\/pulling-up-the-ladder\/","title":{"rendered":"Pulling up the ladder"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I was born in 1954, a Republican President was embarking on the most ambitious peacetime infrastructure in American history, the Interstate\u00c2\u00a0 Highway System. The top marginal tax rate was 91%.<\/p>\n<p>When I was 12 years old, Voting Rights Act finally ensured that African Americans enjoyed the franchise they&#8217;d been denied for hundreds of years. CEOs were paid 24 times what their workers were paid<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>When I graduated from the University of Wisconsin &#8211; Madison my tuition accounted for 20% of the cost of my education. Public funds made up most of the difference.<\/p>\n<p>But then something happened. I tend to think of it as Reaganism, but it has since metastasized into something even more grotesque.<\/p>\n<p>Since the 1980s<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The top marginal tax rate has declined to 35%<\/li>\n<li>Around the country, republican-held legislatures are passing laws restricting voter access, in the name of reducing fraud &#8212; which demonstrably doesn&#8217;t exist in any important way.<\/li>\n<li>\u00c2\u00a0In 2005, CEOs were paid 262 times the average worker&#8217;s pay<\/li>\n<li>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 &#8212; but only seniors younger than me!<\/li>\n<li>Public funding of the UW system has dwindled to 20% of the cost of education a student.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Following generations are losing all these things, in large part because their elders are have been fighting for lower taxes.<\/p>\n<p>Seems to me we&#8217;ve climbed a ladder to prosperity and are now pulling it up behind ourselves. Following generations be damned!<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s shameful, really.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was born in 1954, a Republican President was embarking on the most ambitious peacetime infrastructure in American history, the Interstate\u00c2\u00a0 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&#8217;d been denied for hundreds of years. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","cat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walz-chojnacki.us\/Pensees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walz-chojnacki.us\/Pensees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walz-chojnacki.us\/Pensees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walz-chojnacki.us\/Pensees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walz-chojnacki.us\/Pensees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.walz-chojnacki.us\/Pensees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":193,"href":"https:\/\/www.walz-chojnacki.us\/Pensees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions\/193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walz-chojnacki.us\/Pensees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walz-chojnacki.us\/Pensees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walz-chojnacki.us\/Pensees\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}