Web Commonerpolitics, social commentary, and ramblings on pop culture

The first Matt Damon tongue lashing that I had the pleasure of witnessing came nearly three years ago when John McCain first introduced Sarah Palin to the world. In a heavily circulated interview on the Internet, Damon accurately described the absurdity of the media circus surrounding Palin’s nomination for Vice President, comparing it to a “really bad Disney movie,” and indirectly submitting an unofficial script proposal for a spectacularly horrible straight-to-DVD movie featuring the folksy hockey mom. My personal favorite swipe, though, was Damon’s desperate and rather simple plea to the media, asking that somebody, anybody, find out if she, “really thinks dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago.”

Fast forward to 2011, when the country is no longer threatened by the prospect of a Palin presidency but continues to deal with the toxic Tea Party movement that she helped shape during the 2008 campaign. This time, Damon is forced to contemplate the absurdity of those who argue in favor of continued tax cuts for American millionaires and billionaires while military, domestic, and entitlement spending gets slashed. Interviewed in Washington DC at the Save Our Schools march protesting education policy, Damon laid into the conservative mindset that increased taxes on the ridiculously wealthy is a bad idea.

Lest we forget, Matt Damon is an actor, and nobody should assume that he spends his days scouring the Internet or news networks in search of truth. Still, you don’t have to be a politico or newshound to know how much the Bush tax cuts, which have been in place for ten years, have benefited the upper class and sacrificed everyone else. Indeed, you only need to be poor, out of a job, or incredibly rich with a conscience, like Damon.

His observations, while well-intentioned, are not completely accurate because there was a time in the last century when the wealthy paid exorbitant amounts in taxes. Throughout the last thirty years, the top tax rate rested between 28% and 35%. Before the presidency of Ronald Reagan, though, the wealthy paid nearly double that amount under numerous Republican and Democratic presidents. Given this historical context, Damon’s argument that, “so little is asked of people who are getting so much,” could not be more accurate concerning today’s rich. According to the IRS, tax payers making more than $33,000 annually are expected to pay nearly 100% in income tax while those making more than half a million dollars pay nearly 60% less.

Finally, as Damon notes, there is no reason to believe that the wealthy are so-called, “job creators.” One only has to examine the total number of jobs created under the Bush administration to know that.