In the mythical pursuit of happiness

Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest because of the trees.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees those inalienable rights to which the founding fathers referred in the Declaration of Independence — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Consider your own definition of happiness, then and ask yourself this: do you and your family have the freedom and ability to pursue your idea of happiness in today’s economy?

Conversation in mainstream and social media in recent years has underscored the growth of income inequality — the rich minority getting richer while the majority are left behind.

This is nothing new; it’s been happening for decades. Before a 2014 hearing of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, the Brookings Institute reported that inequality had, in fact, been on a dramatic increase in the U.S. since 1975.

Those findings were in sharp contrast to the pre-1975, post-World War II era when income was distributed with relative equality — the pay of the bottom 20 percent of income earners increased 90 percent while the top 5 percent realized 86 percent growth. That is, people all across the economic spectrum had an equal chance of reaching relative financial prosperity — of achieving their idea of happiness.

I came of age during this period. My father worked in a lumber mill, while my mother stayed home raising my siblings and I. My parents were able to purchase a newly built home in the suburbs filled with families of a similar socio-economic background. We had a truck and camper from which we explored the American west and Western Canada. It was a happy upbringing.

In the 1975 tax year, individual taxpayers earning more than $426,755 (in today’s dollars) fell into the highest tax bracket — fully 70 percent of their earned income was, before deductions, taxable, according to historic tax tables. Back then, it seems, the idea that the more one earned the greater was ones responsibility for the maintenance, upkeep and defense of the Republic was alive and well.

Times and philosophies have since changed. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median 2017 household income was $61,372. The tax burden for that median income was 22 percent, a 9 percent decrease from the 31 percent they would have paid in 1975. So far so good.

Now, compare that with the reduction for today’s most affluent taxpayers — those who fall into the highest tax bracket of $500,000 or greater. Their tax bracket is today 35 percent of their earned income in pre-deduction dollars. That’s a 50 percent reduction compared to their 1975 tax burden.

Further, those in the highest brackets benefit from significant deductions that are unearthed from our byzantine tax code by well-paid tax professionals, the likes of which the median income earner cannot reasonably afford.

After deductions, some of the affluent — perhaps many — pay no taxes. Zero. President Donald Trump infamously paid no taxes after a net operating loss of $916 million in 1995, as uncovered by just three pages of tax returns leaked to the press in 2016. Yet he earned over $10.8 million in business and interest income that year alone.

Meanwhile, he has stubbornly refused to release his full tax returns. Any of them.

Online retail behemoth Amazon earned a profit of $11.2 billion in 2018 yet paid zero taxes. Even as it used the nations public roads, airports, and other infrastructure to earn that profit, it paid nothing to support its upkeep.

So yes, while the tax burden has fallen for most in the past 43 years, it has fallen substantially more for those earning more. That is, those higher income earners are pocketing significantly more of their money than the average American.

Meanwhile, the nation’s infrastructure crumbles and government at every level is strapped for cash. Municipal water systems in Flint, Mich., contaminated by lead from old pipes are being replaced — but only after over 100,000 people were contaminated, and the city was placed into receivership. Roadway engineers find creative ways to maintain crumbing transportation systems as funding levels fall. Government agencies tasked with protecting our water and environment are gutted, effectively reducing their ability to protect Americans from corporate polluters in the name of shareholder profit.

Late last year, a conservative Congress approved sweeping tax cuts that mostly benefited the wealthy. The result? The national debt — something conservatives railed against for decades — began to soar upward. Their solution? They proposed cutting social safety net programs such as Medicare and Social Security that protect societies most vulnerable.

The contrast between greed and empathy is both striking and — or at least should be — alarming.

So, while those at the higher ends of the income tax bracket presumably have few problems pursuing their individual definition of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, most others find their own pursuit challenged at the very least by the economic realities of life in the new, post-Great Recession world. Even as unemployment remains at historic lows, wages, although creeping glacially upward of late, remain in the abyss relative to the increased compensation of corporate executives and CEOs.

Growing student debt — the amount of money owed by more than 44 million college students who borrowed to pay for their post-secondary education — is over $1.5 trillion, according to Forbes.com, and is considered by many economists to be the next financial bubble.

Since a majority of student debts cannot be forgiven through bankruptcy, students saddled with loan debt are stuck with it during those years when, historically, young college graduates were buying homes and raising families. Student debt now keeps many from purchasing a home; an investment traditionally considered the average family’s biggest investment and long tied to middle class wealth creation.

The 2018 tax cut was sold partly through the long-debunked concept of trickle-down economics, the idea that a corporate tax cut will stimulate investment and thus create more jobs. The reality is quite different. The primary stimulus that occurred after the tax cut was an across the board corporate stock buy-back, wherein investors and people like corporate CEOs cash in their stock options and reap the benefit of lower individual income taxes.

So, if it feels like the deck is increasingly stacked against your personal ability to climb the economic ladder in pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, you’re intuition is probably right — it is.

And maybe the reason is right before our eyes; if only we stopped to take a broader view of the forest of inequity that is growing around us.

Lee Hughes can be reached at lee@cheneyfreepress.com