There’s a very fundamental difference in the beliefs of our two candidates this election. It has to do with success and responsibility.
In short, the two choices we have look like this:
- Success comes with more responsibility.
- Those who succeed have no responsibility other than to themselves and their business.
This is what we’re talking about in this election. It’s not a choice between two evils. It’s a choice between two very different beliefs and visions for our country.
Don’t believe me? If you want to know what people really believe, look at how they spend money. Look at their budgets.
What made America great
One of the things that made America great in the past was our belief that with greater success comes more responsibility. We believed in paying our success forward to future generations. We understood that success isn’t born, but cultivated. For example, our founders established public education so everyone had an opportunity to develop themselves as best possible. We developed one of the largest national park systems in the world so that everyone could enjoy our land and benefit. Throughout our history, we’ve fought against inequality to raise people up. These investments and the level of equality we created provided opportunities that allowed people to do amazing things.
We understood that it takes good people, goals, and resources to create success.
This is the morality behind progressive taxation. As people succeed, they pay a part of that success forward to make sure the next generation has the resources, education, and low barriers to entry to succeed. If they don’t, the conditions that created successful people to begin with disappear and won’t be there for the next generation.
Another way to say this is that we, the people, create the economy and we can do this in any number of ways. It can benefit a few people or it can benefit us all.
Trump: Less responsibility for the wealthy
If you want to know about the two different visions, look at their budgets.
Donald Trump’s vision of our country is that we should give tax cuts to the wealthy and they will in turn “create” jobs. Specifically, he’s proposed dropping the tax rate on businesses (like his own) to 15 percent. He also proposes lowering the top income tax bracket rate from 39.6 percent to 33 percent and getting rid of the estate tax (which currently only impacts individuals with an estate larger than $5.45 million—$10.9 million for a married couple). Give to the rich and it will “trickle down.” This doesn’t make sense and has never worked as advertised. Businesses hire people when they need them. They hire when there’s an increase in demand. Not when someone writes them a tax loophole on their profits.
The conservative Tax Foundation, making the assumption that tax cuts will grow the economy, estimates Trump’s vision would add $2.6 to $3.9 trillion to the deficit. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, under less rosy predictions, estimates his budget would add $5 trillion to the debt.
Trump does not believe the wealthy have a responsibility to our country.
Yes, we’ve been told since the 1960s and 70s by folks like Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand that all we need is selfishness. While profit and selfishness can be a good motivator and are necessary for business survival, this focus on selfishness at the expense of everything else has come at a great price to our country: We’ve seen less and less of our country’s success reinvested in our infrastructure, our people, and the generations to follow.
Clinton: Success comes with more responsibility
Clinton’s vision of our country is that those who succeed have a greater responsibility. You can see this in the budget she lays out asking the wealthy to pay more according to their success. Instead of passing costs down to future generations, her budget generates $500 million that could be used to help pay for improving our infrastructure and making sure future generations can be just as successful as today.
Does it go far enough? Probably not. But it’s a start. And it does keep us moving in the right direction to everyone doing better (instead of just a few). It would help return us to the path of remembering that success comes with more responsibility, not less.
Remember this election that we’re voting on two very different visions for America: One in which those who succeed have less responsibility, while the other is of a responsible America. Or as Winston Churchill said:
The price of greatness is responsibility. If the people of the United States had continued in a mediocre station, struggling with the wilderness, absorbed in their own affairs, and a factor of no consequence in the movement of the world, they might have remained forgotten and undisturbed beyond their protecting oceans: but one cannot rise to be in many ways the leading community in the civilized world without being involved in its problems, without being convulsed by its agonies and inspired by its causes.
Success comes with more responsibility.
David Akadjian is the author of The Little Book of Revolution: A Distributive Strategy for Democracy (ebook now available).