Portside

The recent revelation that Donald Trump may have avoided paying federal income tax on nearly one billion dollars of revenue should make us stop and think twice about the cozy relationship between our lawmakers and wealthy business people.

Because Trump is just the tip of iceberg.

Trump may be the most imbecilic person ever to run for president, but his tax shenanigans are the norm in his bracket

The quiet crisis is not that Trump is a tax cheat; it’s that Trump’s tax avoidance schemes are – most likely – 100% legal. But just because it’s legal, doesn’t make it right.

There is not a single business in the United States – or anywhere – that doesn’t benefit from highways, bridges, public-school-educated employees, clean water, clean air and public safety. And there is hardly a business that is not harmed when these public resources collapse. But rather than pay their fair share, most mega corporations and wealthy special interests funnel “petty cash” into city, state, and federal elections in order to elect politicians that deliver tax-breaks, subsidies, and other benefits in return. As a result, we have tax laws that subsidize risk and allow billionaires to amass perverse profits that have helped the top 0.1% of the population accumulate as much wealth as the bottom 90%. Trump may be the most imbecilic person that has ever run for president, but his tax shenanigans are the norm for people in his bracket. Billionaire-investor Warren Buffet flashed a spotlight on this absurdity in 2013 when he complained that he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary.

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Meanwhile, working-class people – people who can’t afford a $50,000-a-plate dinner with politicians – are keeping the lights on in Congress with their tax dollars. It’s a system that Republican senator John McCain and former president Jimmy Carter refer to as “legalized bribery”.

That system works great for people like Trump. According to a study by the Sunlight Foundation, for every dollar spent to influence politics, for-profit corporations received $760 in benefits from the government. In other words, the system isn’t broken, it’s fixed.

The problem is that this type of pay-to-play politics is business as usual – businesses and wealthy people manipulate laws to benefit themselves every day of the year.

There is no free market. The market is “free” only to those who can afford to rig it in their favor.

That’s where the government comes in. We need representatives and policymakers in Washington with backbone who can stand up against corporate greed and malfeasance. We need lawmakers who will ensure that the common good comes first – that means supporting a $15 minimum wage, stopping bad trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and supporting a progressive tax rate that ensures everyone pays their fair share, where people who earn the most contribute the most.

Trump’s problems go beyond his tax returns. And Lord knows if we let Trump anywhere near the White House it will be a major setback for civilization as we know it. But the problem that has been exposed by the way Trump does his taxes is endemic and encouraged by the laws that our politicians – Democrats and Republicans – have passed.

It’s not enough to simply defeat Trump. We need to end a corrupt campaign finance system that allows billionaires and corporations to profit at the expense of everyone else. And that work is bigger than any one election. We cannot depend on a slim majority of supreme court justices to solve the problem that they created in misguided rulings such as Buckley v Valeo and Citizens United v FEC. We need a 28th amendment to constitution that requires all federal elections to be financed exclusively by democracy vouchers – a $100 tax credit that every citizen of voting age will be able to donate to the politicians of their choice.

And in order to win an amendment, we need to demonstrate mass, unstoppable, public demand to stamp money out of politics.

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield are founders of Ben and Jerry's