OBAMA DOCTRINE DANGEROUS TO TOXIC WEALTH
By Farouk Martins Aresa
We are yet to voice our outrage collectively in Nigeria as Americans did against corporate bums. Especially at this moment against AIG officers who got bonus after taking public dole to bail them out while the rest of the Country slash wages or loose their jobs. An outrage is so effective, some AIG officers are dropping their bonus begging for anonymity. Not in Nigeria, where some of us may shout until we are hoarse, politicians hardly budge. A few practice decadent habits of foreigners but ignore those that can be of benefit to the majority of Nigerians. Before this latest outrage, US conservatives were up in arms ready to derail Obama and will spin this against him.
If Obama had demanded these corporate heads on a silver platter or ask for 90% tax on bonuses as they now want because of this AIG disclosure, the same people could have labeled him a communist trying to destroy the capitalist system. They were the same ones saying government can not tell them how to run the business, even when that business failed and they relinquished controlling shares to get public parachutes. It is ironic but understandable that both conservatives and most liberals are railing against corporate officers in the United States. There is no more business as usual under Obama era, even as he accepted ultimate responsibility.
It is one thing to win an election, quit another to implement the campaign pledges. It would be even tougher to label it a silent revolution that the people have had enough of conservative tax whining when ninety-five percent of the people are getting tax cut. The same people at the top who accumulated more wealth or were lucky enough to be born into it, would not pay their fair share of taxes voluntarily without a fight in the US; or prefer to forfeit their loot outside Nigeria.
Even when majority of the people are going to pay less taxes, the rich do not see that as a tax cut because they are not included and are ready to call it a tax hike with the cooperation and support of the working-class. On the other hand, if the rich pay less and the difference is spread amongst the middle and the working-class, it is seen as tax cut. That was what went on for most of the time conservative reigned plunging the world into melt-down. Now the liberals are vowing to change that with one heavy of foot dragging from conservatives.
Some of the bad habits Nigerians learn from Americans as in that How to Rob a bank, are comparatively petite. Nobody in his wildest imagination would compare a Nigerian with the league of Madoff or Abramoff. If they named them Ripoff, you had better believe it. Still, reasonable wealthy people around the world, Americans in particular are happy with Obama and voted for him. But some of these greedy top 5% where most of the wealth is concentrated are not so sure; and Obama political capital may diminish to accomplish a change from the past.
It was Nigeria that fought a civil war over oil money without borrowing a kobo. Americans must think they are Nigerians too. They engaged two countries in wars without asking the rich to pay their own fair share while the middle and the working-class pay in blood, cash and kind. Oh, a couple of senators have their children fighting too. At the end of the day, something has to give. So the rich and the powerful placate your tax interest against Obama when in fact they refuse pay their dues and taxes progressively on the money they were, in the first place fortunate, to be in a position to accumulate. They see greed as profit and may be generous to their own chosen causes at home and abroad.
They have been warning that Obama may turn USA into a socialist domain like Europe, scaring the hell out of the ambition of the working and the middle-class who would one day like to be as rich. Rich people know better that unless you get well fed to digest a quality education, know the right people and in the right place at the right time, the fat chances of poor people’s euphoria happening are nothing more than mirages. But the scare tactics works, and Nigerian politicians have adapted the tricks and pledges into home style strategies.
This is why many poor people in the developing countries would defend the ill-gotten gains of the rich and powerful. It is their wish that one day they would be in the same status before their own Obama closed their chances. The staunchest defenders of the politicians in Nigeria are the aspiring looters and politicians in training. As soon as their masters’ crumbs fall on their laps, they infiltrate media to propagate their side and use crude detention against dissenting voices. Pity, Obasanjo represented home looters in London when he was pelted with egg and tomatoes. That is a message to the rest of his forty thieves of what to expect.
History still teaches us that lords used to dictate and collect taxes from the working poor. It used to be that at the end of serf’s contract, they always owned more than when they started working. By the time their rent, groceries and utility are deducted from their wages, they had no choice but to put their families to work hoping to make more money or break even. These reincarnations of the filthy rich are now afraid to pay tax claiming the less they pay the better for the rest of us.
In Nigeria, they go a step further, all the public housing luxuriously built are allocated to the rich and the senior officers. Politicians and civil war conferred generals fly in luxury jets competing with honest businessmen; and high class tax dodging swindlers in preachers’ shrouds. The exotic cars are painted green if need be for the armed forces while the poor and junior officers fend for themselves in shacks on the streets. The more they steal, the less the poor have to share and fight over. As the case of brother conservatives, the less tax they pay, the less money left to run essential services like education, health and agriculture.
The working-class, in fear of tax hikes always latches on to the call of the very few rich condemning progressive taxes so that they can see a little more from their pay checks. People who cannot afford health insurance or prescription drugs refuse to pay a fraction of what it will cost them as taxes. In other words, if it cost a couple of hundreds to pay into a pool or universal health insurance, they do not want it because the rich call it socialized medicine. They prefer, or are left at the mercy of their foolish decision to go bankrupt or die unable to pay exorbitant charges while the rich have money to buy theirs anywhere. That is penny wise, pound foolish.
Conservatives also want the government out of the way of anything that can generate money so that they can have exclusive generation of profit while the government goes broke losing money, begging them for tax or donation in order to provide critical services and infrastructure. Their point is to make government so ineffective and unproductive while they enjoy with their families in exclusive clubs.
The poor who toil in order to make their profit is only good as disposable workers. If they can, US would be made up entirely of poor inner cities not different from Nigeria surrounded by rich suburbs, the preferred America. That is two countries in one, developing and developed.
