An instructive story about how laws are made

Submitted by martin on 23 December, 2017 - 8:56 Author: Martin Thomas
How the rich rule

The US Congress has passed the tax-cuts scheme pushed by Donald Trump and long desired by Republicans.

The Republicans say that a lot of people will get tax cuts in the short term, and that the big benefits ceded to the rich and to businesses will "trickle down" into improvements from workers. Everyone else says the tax changes are a shameless act of social larceny.

The truly instructive story is about one detail. As part of his populist pitch pre-election, Donald Trump had sworn to close a particular tax loophole advantageous to hedge fund and private equity managers, "carried interest". It has survived.

Gary Cohn, director of Trump’s National Economic Council, and a plutocrat himself, was startlingly candid about it.

"We would have cut carried interest. We probably tried 25 times. The reality of this town [Washington] is that constituency [hedge funds and private equity] has a very large presence in the House and the Senate".

When it comes to the core interests of the capitalist class, the "constituency" has an overwhelming presence not only in the US Congress but also in all capitalist parliaments.

It will retain that overwhelming presence until the labour movement develops the strength and the democratic sinews to secure working-class representation in politics through representatives who are truly identified with and accountable to the working class.

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