As a Cook County Circuit judge, I hear primarily domestic relations and domestic violence cases. The people before me take a lunch box and go off to work.
What I see on a daily basis is depressing to me and ominous for our country. And I don’t mean divorces. Men and women, particularly men in the trades, are unemployed and underemployed. These folks have labored long hours and sacrificed to buy small homes that now frequently are underwater or in foreclosure. They become depressed; they question their commitments and their love for their partners and even their children. Drugs, alcohol, gambling or solace in the arms of someone else frequently follow economic distress. Arguments escalate, children hover in corners, marriages crumble.
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Rigor mortis has set in on the American dream.
I grew up in Englewood in the ’40s and ’50s. The men worked in factories or the stockyards. My dad worked in the stockyards until he got a job driving a streetcar and then a bus. But seven of his eight children got advanced degrees. And we weren’t alone. Of the kids I hung with in grammar school, several became accountants, one founded a construction company, one became a captain with United Airlines, two became priests, two lawyers and several tradesmen. In those days it wasn’t hard to work your way through college.
The sons and daughters of the working people I see in court end up in dead-end jobs, go into the Army, attend a two-year community college or saddle themselves with backbreaking loans at a university. Their parents stand helplessly by wishing to do more.
In 2008 the housing bubble collapsed and the stock market plunged. The American economy teetered on a second Great Depression. Major banks, Chrysler and General Motors seemed about to go under. Congress passed the Troubled Asset Relief Program, a $700 billion bailout that was supposed to save the banking industry, stem the mortgage foreclosure crisis and stabilize the increasing unemployment.
TARP did save our financial system. But the main beneficiaries were those who created the mortgage foreclosure and unemployment crises. In the meantime mortgage foreclosures increased, and while the unemployment rate has decreased, many Americans are earning significantly less.
A second Great Depression was avoided, but working people have not benefited to the same degree as the wealthy.
It’s time for a similar bailout for American working people. It is needed, will benefit all of us and, like the funds paid out in TARP, will be repaid.
We need to invest something like a trillion additional dollars in our country. This investment will put men and women to work and benefit everybody.
Many of our airports need upgrades; our passenger rail system is a disgrace; public transportation in most of our cities falls far behind that of similar urban areas in Europe and Asia; our bridges and tunnels are crumbling. Pouring $1 trillion to upgrade and repair these essential areas will improve commerce, transportation and tourism. It will benefit all of us, particularly American working people.
And now the heresy: Fund the programs by significantly increasing gasoline taxes and provide for increased taxes on a graduated basis on all income, from whatever source, over $500,000. A tax rate of 40 percent on the wealthiest 5 percent would bring in significant funds and would still be far less than the tax rate for similar incomes under President Ronald Reagan. And borrow the rest like we did to support wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
A much healthier economy should assist in paying off the loans. Years ago we were told that cutting taxes on the wealthy would benefit working people. The extra money would “trickle down” to them. It didn’t happen. But strengthening the earning capacity of working men and women should have both a trickle-up and trickle-down impact.
Less public money will be spent on unemployment, Link and other social welfare programs. Unlike the wealthy, working people cannot hoard extra income. They will spend it on items produced by the wealthy, which will produce economic opportunities for those still lower on the economic ladder.
We should also do this because it is the right thing to do. Working people have always been the backbone of this country. Marginalizing them will be disastrous not only for them but for the rest of us.
Cook County Circuit Judge Patrick Murphy served as Cook County public guardian from 1978 to 2004.
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