David Russell

Guest columnist

Libertarian conservatives seem worried at what they see as a turn toward socialism, especially among young people. A recent Register guest column gravely predicts, “The march of millennials toward European-style social democracy will be inhibited by the massive government debt and insolvent public pension programs we will be bequeathing them.”

In another recent Register guest essay, the president of an organization funded by the Koch brothers and other billionaires is alarmed at a recent poll that found 67% of Americans under age 40 support free college and 73% support universal health care. He worries that “single-payer health care and free higher education were once considered fringe ideas” but now “threaten the individual liberties that undergird our free-market system.”

In fact, the only threat is to the tax rates of the super-rich.

Affordable medical care for all Americans is a mainstream idea, as is affordable college. About one-third of Americans with health insurance already have single payer because they have either Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Administration, or other government plans.

Tuition is free at public colleges and universities in New York for families making less than $125,000, and it used to be free for many Americans, either free or far less inexpensive. Tuition was free in California until the late 1960s, when then-governor Ronald Reagan cut funding for higher education and instituted tuition.

Iowa State had free tuition for in-state students until the 1990s. There was a fee. But it amounted to about one-third of what Iowa State students pay today for in-state tuition and fees, adjusted for inflation.

Are conservatives right to be worried? The super-rich ones should be. Their taxes will go up. But taxes on anyone but the super-rich need not go up to fund ideas that are in fact mainstream, and have been for decades.

We could not only make Social Security solvent but also increase benefits if we were to “scrap the cap.” Social Security is funded by withholding taxes, as every worker knows. But workers pay them only on the first $132,000 of income. That cap means billionaires pay the same as a family making $132,000. That’s deeply unfair.

Obamacare, which lowered the uninsured rate by half, to 8.8 percent, is funded mainly by a 1 to 4% increase in certain taxes only paid by those making over $200,000. In other words, only the richest 5% of taxpayers pay more, and mainly the richest 1%. With another small increase in what the richest pay, all Americans could be covered.

The super-rich are rightly afraid that their taxes will go up if the ideas that most Americans favor become a reality. According to a recent Fox News poll, 70% of all Americans, including 54% of Republicans, think taxes on incomes over $10 million should go up. Now that’s a mainstream idea!

From the very start of Social Security, under FDR in the 1930s, the wealthy attacked it as socialist. But for decades it’s been so popular it’s called “the third rail” of American politics.

In 1961, Ronald Reagan warned that Medicare would bring about “a socialist dictatorship.” George H.W. Bush ridiculed Medicare as “socialized medicine” when it was enacted in the 1960s. Then it became hugely popular, and it still is today. His son George W. Bush tried to privatize Social Security in 2005 but the backlash stopped him in his tracks.

Making socialism into a bogeyman is an old trick, but it won’t work any more. Most Americans want our government to provide things that even middle-class Americans can’t afford otherwise: a guaranteed retirement savings plan, health insurance for everyone, including those with preexisting conditions. Most Americans want high-quality, low-cost public higher education. And if the super-rich have to pay a little more in taxes, that seems fair to a large majority of Americans.

But the richest can afford higher taxes, as America proved in the 1950s, when the top marginal tax rate was over 90%, and our liberties and our economy were no more threatened than they are today. Stop crying socialism! It’s just crying wolf.

David R. Russell is a professor of English at Iowa State University. The opinions expressed represent his views as a citizen. They are not intended to represent the views of his employer.