The slogan for the Trump campaign is “Make America Great Again.” This clearly means different things to different people. For a large number of Trump supporters it is euphemism for making America white again. These people include Neo Nazis, White Nationalists, the KKK and general hate groups targeting gays, Muslims, Jews, and immigrants. The number of hate groups has grown to more than 890 over recent years. For a while, some hate groups had started to fade and lose members, but the election of President Obama caused many to come out of the closet and revive their rhetoric. Groups like the KKK had lost steam after the civil rights movement. Many of us thought we were finally by the worst of the bigotry. We were clearly wrong, and never foresaw the rise of incendiary radio and television commentators who would spew bigotry, racism and lies over the airwaves. Now we have a man running for the highest elected office of the land, who revels in fanning the fires of hate and encouraging violence. This has given a sense of normalcy to behavior that used to be considered wrong, crude and criminal.

There is another group among the Trump supporters who want to turn back the clock to a time they thought was better. They see this time as good because for them, it was. This was an era when there were fewer divorces, more church attendance, most women not holding jobs outside the home and a single income sufficient to support a family. Man still ruled his “castle” and the government didn’t interfere too much with him. It was also a time when disabled people were excluded from most public functions and buildings, people with mental illnesses were shut away, and anyone who was mentally challenged was not welcome in the schools. Women, people of color and immigrants were regularly treated with less respect and lower wages. So how great America was depended on who you were and where you lived.

Perhaps the largest group of people who support Trump are angry about the economy and think that somehow the government has made things worse for them. They have a reason for their anger; they are just focusing it at the wrong target.

An army of lobbyists has risen over the past two decades and congress has given them enormous access to the lawmaking process. Congressmen and women were wined and dined and received many “gifts” as well as huge sums of money for their campaigns. The lobbyists influenced them to incorporate into various new pieces of legislation what the corporations wanted. Since individual people making far less money than the top 5 percent don’t have this power, they don’t have the same influence, either. This is how corporate America got a stranglehold on the government.

Congress passed laws allowing the marginal tax rate to go down from a high of 90 percent in the 1960s to the current rate of 39 percent. During the war years it was 81-94 percent. We were recovering from a depression and funding a World War. The government made huge investments in infrastructure which put a lot of people to work. During the Vietnam war it was 90-70 percent because the post WWII expansion was slowing and we were exploring space, ramping up our nuclear capacity and funding that war.

Yet during the time when the Bush administration went to war, it cut the marginal tax rate to 28 percent. Always in the past it was understood that you could not have wars without funding them. It used to be said you couldn’t have ‘guns and butter.” But the Bush administration not only cut those taxes, it cut the estate taxes on the rich and lowered everyone’s tax rate, as well as instituting a number of tax credits. While we all enjoyed having those new tax credits, the country was accumulating war debts in a big way. These were all measures to help bolster the economy after 9/11, but these measures didn’t help in the long run. The war was paid for by cutting education and infrastructure in our own country, as well as just leaving “off the books” the vast sums of money sent to Iraq for nation building. This debt was left for the next administration to fix.

The curious thing is that the time when taxes were the highest on corporations (48-50 percent) and the wealthy (70-90 percent marginal rates) the country flourished, wealthy people made investments and companies expanded. Health care was affordable and CEO pay to the worker pay 30:1. We grew a huge middle class and it prospered. Now CEO pay to worker pay is 300:1 and worker’s wages have mostly stagnated while the costs of living rose. In effect, the average person has lost ground in the past 30 years even while staying employed. Health costs have skyrocketed with both care and drugs, making the U.S. health care system the most expensive in the world. In 1980 the U.S. spent about $1,110 per person on average and by 2010 it was $8,402. The costs are much higher and the health outcomes so much worse. While corporate taxes have not changed since 1993 (35 percent) corporations have cut pensions, cut their share of health insurance costs, cut jobs in the name of efficiency, increased worker’s work loads and substantially increased their profits. Now, unlike the 20th century, the CEO’s and management are the ones making huge profits while shareholders are much more vulnerable to the market variations. During the economic collapse of 2007 many people lost their pensions and took huge losses while CEOs and other high level management still got bonuses.

If we want a great America for all of us, we need all to be paying our fair share of taxes. We need the corporations to bring their money back from overseas and pay taxes on it. We need to cut the waste in government programs. The marginal tax rate must go back to something more like 50 or 60 percent to shake loose the piles of money sitting at the top of the economy and not circulating as it once did. Mostly we need everyone to decide to rebuild America by being part of it, not evading our responsibility to the government or the people.

Susan Chichetto lives in Bath.