We have all heard calls that the Occupy movement should have some specific demands.  I don’t necessarily buy that argument, but perhaps the rest of us ought to have a specific demand for the Deficit Reduction Super Committee before they agree to something foolish.

We need to have five years of experience starting now with progressive taxation as practiced in the 1950s so that we will know if there needs to be any cuts in programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, higher education support, infrastructure investment, and other societal investments.  There should be absolutely no negotiations on the cut backs until we have this experience under our belts.

I don’t just mean tax rates and deductions.  I mean a broader take on the subject of progressive taxation including inheritance taxes, wealth transfer from one generation to the next, and corporate repatriation of foreign profits to name just a few.  For eight pages of details on what comes under the rubric of progressive taxation, read the article in my previous post, How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich.

Yes, of course the tax brackets and other specific numbers in the tax code need to be adjusted for inflation. Don’t nitpick the small details of  the idea.  Think of the broad concept.  We can judge the details of what the Super Committee comes up with against the broad idea proposed here.  First the Super Committee needs to know what we have in mind when we say compromise.

I first learned about this idea of taxation before cuts from a poster called island liberal.  I published her or his statement in the previous post Call Kerry Now: Deficit Panel Seeks to Defer Details on Raising Taxes.

I find this idea so worthwhile that I am giving it its own post.  That will make it show up in search engines better.  It also gives a clean vehicle for others to share, tweet, like, and +1.

Especially for those who think the Occupy movement is not going to be effective, why not try promoting this idea without their help to see how far you get.

Truth Out has an excellent article Smear Campaigns Fuel Shutdowns of Occupations Across Country.  I’ll just pick out a few points to give you one idea that I had already thought of and some that I had not.

Boston, however, is a highly populated city with plenty of crime and drug trafficking. And, in the course of the occupation’s first month, police – often using undercover sting operations – did manage to make four drug arrests, all of them involving homeless people selling to undercover cops.
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For those with mental health issues, it is quite a shame that in our system they are so often forced to the streets to starve, as opposed to being treated in humane public facilities. It is indeed remarkable that the collective good will of Occupy Vermont, for instance, cares better for the homeless than the federal government.

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Perhaps a better question would have been, “Does the United States economy have a homeless problem and will Occupy Wall Street help us fix it?”

This is probably a case of confirmation bias on my part. I have been suspicious that the claims of violence against Occupy sites are convenient excuses. This interviewee’s opinion confirms my suspicion. I wonder if people actually studied cities where there are acts of violence every day to discover if there are more acts of violence than normal or fewer acts of violence than normal around the Occupy encampments. If the answer is fewer, then the cities ought to ask people to start up Occupy encampments.