The sins of the 1% class, Utah style

The Capitol in Salt Lake City is pictured on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

In the 21st century our newly visible wealthy elite aristocracy, together with a few super-wealthy oligarchs leading the way, have essentially “come out” as a political class openly working to subvert American democratic values/processes and install themselves as America’s untouchable ruling class. The 2010 “Citizens United” court decision allows them to use their unlimited resources to purchase politicians willing to bend the knee to their every legislative wish, essentially turning the Congress into homeless beggars shining shoes and licking boots for a living.

American democratic culture has always understood that unregulated accumulation of capital makes for anti-democratic corruption of wealth holders. Not long ago, we imposed luxury taxes on everything from yachts to mansions to cars to airplanes to keep people from believing that they were special above all others. However, we no longer seem to care about the corrosive effects of huge piles of money because we repealed many of those taxes.

In Utah the wealthy class aligns with evangelical religious interests, which encompass certain Protestant, Catholic, and Latter-day Saint sub-groupings, as is the case nationwide. The idea is that the considerable private resources of the “kingdom of God,” together with regular encouragement to individual and familial self-sufficiency provided by church education systems, allows the public sector to clip its own wings by cutting back on state and local taxes.

The Utah legislature has cut the state income tax five times in recent years under the guise of promoting upward mobility for all Utahns. Their efforts constitute a reduction of the overall resources available for public uses in Utah without providing for regularized replacement sources of income.

In Utah, the Republican-controlled legislature recently attempted to allow a constitutionally mandated “earmark” of income tax funds for public schools, higher education, children and disabled people to be freed up for other purposes when needed. One might argue this amounts to a shift away from the priority that Utah’s ancestors established by instituting the “education earmark” in 1948 in the first place. After successfully concluding World War II, soldiers came home fully recognizing that they had fought for a more democratic world. They wanted to see progress in education for all of Utah’s citizens, not just the wealthy portion of the citizenry or a religiously partisan portion of it.

At a time when the national MAGA party is decimating long-standing federal education commitments, traditional Republican party theory says state governments are obligated to pick up the slack by means of federal block grants or at very least maintain local commitments. However, Utah is trying to deep-six the most important of those local commitments, further strangulating resources devoted to marginalized populations.

In October 2024, the court ruled that the legislature had failed to meet the informed notice requirements of a proper constitutional amendment, so the measure was voided for this year by the court.

The Sutherland Institute, Utah’s conservative think tank, ably summarizes the evangelical notion of private sector sufficiency by touting “the Utah Miracle.” This miracle is Utah’s heavy and purportedly successful dependence upon “economic growth, high religious attendance, and unmatched rates of married families.” However, this tripartite private focus is clearly not broad enough to “lift all boats,” or to provide for “trickle-down” resources from the rich to the poor, as evidenced by Utah’s exploding unhoused population.

Nationwide, unregulated capital has trashed the U.S. Constitution at every turn, including working to unhinge America from its progressive income tax structure and also rely on regressive sales and fuel taxes; end business competition by means of industry-wide monopolies in restraint of trade; diminish corporate taxation; lower tax rates on capital gains; prohibit government bargaining on drug prices; discriminate against lower-income renters by way of the home mortgage interest deduction provision of the tax code; double the exemption for estate taxes for the rich; push debt spending through misleading advertising so as to keep the middle class and the working poor in a perpetual state of debt servitude; engage in stock buybacks to line their own pockets.

For 3,000 years the Judeo-Christian culture in Europe and America kept interest rates charged on borrowers in the single-digit range, but now the American aristocracy has succeeded in charging 20% and more on credit card rates for the middle class, and anywhere from 100-300% on annualized short-term payday-type loans to the working poor. Utah recently had the second highest short-term consumer loan rates in the nation.

Since World War II the wealthy have also promoted the long-term decline of unions capable of collective bargaining. Utah wants to add to this negative trend by prohibiting public unions from collective bargaining. Utah voters are currently working on an initiative to reverse this legislative policy.